| Using Ahimsa/Non-violence to pluralize Economics Economics is generally considered to be the "hardest" or the most quantitative of the social sciences. However, mainstream economic theory acheives this regor at the cost of banishing all alternative perspectives. For example at the undergraduate level, in the name of economics students are likely to encounter a profusion of graphs and models, all serving to hide an underlying poverty of perspective on important questions relating to the well-being of our society and our planet. Instead of being about obscure mathematical models, economics should be the study of how we organize the material aspects of our existence, i.e. how we produce goods, how we distribute them, and how we consume them in order to sustain and reproduce ourselves. These are all questions that bring us into contact with others and with the environment. Hence Ahimsa- the principle of love and compassion- has a lot to say in guiding our economic behavior. One way to pluralize economics is to incorporate Ahimsa into the economics curriculum. The writings of Gandhi, J.C. Kumarappa, E.F. Schumacher and others provide us with alternative perspectives on the issues of production, distribution and consumption. These perspectives can serve to provide the core for designing an introductory course on the Economics of Ahimsa. If one further includes the writings of religious figures and indigenous peoples of the world on how to live in harmony with the Earth, even more materials are available. For those interested, I am in the process of building a basic bibiography for such a course. Watch this space for more information. (this write-up is taken from a short piece I wrote for the first newsletter of the Ahimsa Center, based in Pomona, California. Check out the activities of this center. They do some very relevant and interesting work. Here are a couple of initial attempts are theorizing an Economics of Ahimsa: Economics of Ahimsa and the Environment - April 2006 (pdf format) This is a paper presented at the International Conference on "Ahimsa and the Quality of Life". I focus on the use of Ahimsa (non-violence, compassion) in challeging modern economics and discuss the basic principles of a non-modern Economics of Ahimsa based upon the thought of M.K. Gandhi, J.C. Kumarappa and others. The Economics of Ahimsa: Gandhi, Kumarappa and the non-modern challenge to Economics - Jan 2005 (pdf format) An essay that situates the economic thought of Mahatma Gandhi and JC Kumarappa in the philosophical context of the fact-value dichotomy and also explores solutions to the problems of overconcumption and distancing from the Gandhi-Kumarappa perspective.
|
