Economists are sometimes said to focus only on the broad patterns and measures of change overlooking the processes generating the patterns while anthropologists focus on detailed processes in specific locations so overlooking the broader context which may shape and be shaped by these local processes. This session consists of a conversation between an economist and anthropologist and shows how economists and anthropologist can learn from each other to build an interdisciplinary perspective that better explains social change with respect to gender and international development.
Naila Kabeer will reflect back on her early training in neo-classical economics and her subsequent transition into a more interdisciplinary concern with feminism and international development. She will focus on a number of different ways in which she drew on feminist anthropology to obtain a more empirically grounded take on some of the concepts and models that economists work on with respect to households; livelihoods and choice.
Ann Whitehead will draw on her fieldwork from rural Britain and Ghana, focusing on developing concepts and models to explore households, livelihoods and decision-making about resource allocation drawing from her training in anthropological tools with respect to social relations and social embeddedness. Her specific innovation was to explore these as sites of gender power and gender differences and this lead to several critiques of economists’ accounts of women’s behaviour in rural Africa. Fast forward to 21st century, where critiques of homo economicus, and explorations of the social embeddedness of economic behaviour are key ideas in feminist and other heterodox economic models.