I don't know Rajani Kanth personally, but I really like his recent books, even though
I don't agree with him on everything (including some of his interpretations of Marx).
But how many economists are willing to bring up the issue of eurocentrism in the
discipline? For that alone I think his stuff is important. I am also sympathetic
with his related critiques of science and western discourse and the methodological
implications. And there is not only Breaking with the Enlightenment, there is also
his Against Economics. I was less excited about his earlier work on Ricardo (though
even there I think there are some worthwhile contributions, e.g., ideology and
ideological context), but I think his development reader is a very good one, a very
good supplementary text for development courses that can introduce students not only
to some of the classic articles in early development but also to world systems theory,
uneven development, dependency, and unequal exchange. There is a!
small cadre of economists working on postcolonialism and its relevance for economics
and political economy (including Colin Danby, Charusheela, Eiman Zein-Elabdin, Nitasha
Kaul), and Kanth is doing work that sort of fits in there. Postcolonialism is very
interesting because it combines some of the insights of poststructuralism with a
central concern with imperialism, colonialism, racism, feminism. The important
theorists they draw on are all very radical, like Cabral, Fanon, Cesaire, Ngugi wa
Thiongo. Mat
