This edi­tion comes from Kam­pala, Uganda, where I’m co-orga­ni­zing a Sum­mer School, explo­ring wealth ine­qua­lity with a focus on Afri­can con­texts and new insights.

»

While this News­let­ter is typi­cally sent out from some­where in cen­tral Europe, it occa­sio­nally comes from else­where, e.g. when I am on vaca­tion or tra­ve­ling to con­fe­ren­ces. As a result, I have sent News­let­ter-issues from many dif­fe­rent count­ries in the past decade, inclu­ding count­ries far off from my home, like the US or Chile. Howe­ver, this issue of the News­let­ter is some­what of a pre­mière as it is the first issue ever that is sent out from Africa, where I am co-orga­ni­zing a Sum­mer School on Wealth and Ine­qua­lity Rese­arch in Africa at Make­rere Uni­ver­sity in Kam­pala, Uganda, tog­e­ther with Howard Stein (Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan) and Resty Naiga (Make­rere Uni­ver­sity), that is finan­ced by Volks­wa­gen Foundation.*

Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics Newsletter

Der Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter wird her­aus­ge­ge­ben von Jakob Kapel­ler und erscheint im drei­wö­chent­li­chen Rhyth­mus mit Neu­ig­kei­ten aus der wis­sen­schaft­li­chen Com­mu­nity mul­ti­pa­ra­dig­ma­ti­scher öko­no­mi­scher Ansätze. Der News­let­ter rich­tet sich an einen Kreis von mehr als 7.000 Empfänger*innen und zählt schon weit mehr als 250 Ausgaben.

For me, this is a great expe­ri­ence as I have done some rese­arch on wealth ine­qua­lity, but all my efforts so far have been focu­sed on count­ries in the Glo­bal North. Howe­ver, rea­ding a little bit into the lite­ra­ture on wealth dyna­mics in Africa sug­gests that while I can expect to revi­sit some fami­liar pat­terns, like the pre­sence of dif­fe­ren­tial rates of return or the power law dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth at the top, both, the exact com­po­si­tion of wealth as well as the asso­cia­ted mech­anims gover­ning wealth-dyna­mics seem some­what dif­fe­rent at first sight. One very basic insight, that pro­ba­bly does not come as a too big sur­prise, I alre­ady gai­ned is that land owner­ship is a cru­cial dimen­sion of ana­ly­sis in Africa, while it is lar­gely negle­c­ted in glo­bal North count­ries, where the respec­tive varia­bles are mostly coded as ‚housing’ and often do not even allow to ana­lyze land owner­ship as a sepa­rate dimension.

Against this back­drop, I am really eager to learn a lot more in this Sum­mer School about the nuan­ces and dif­fe­ren­ces and underly the repro­duc­tion of (wealth) ine­qua­lity in Afri­can con­texts – so while I will be con­tri­bu­ting two talks mys­elf for the rest of the Sum­mer School I ima­gine mys­elf as a curious stu­dent eager to get a grip on what goes on in this part of the world.

What intri­gues me the most about this is the inter­play bet­ween gene­ral mechanisms/patterns and con­text-spe­ci­fic rea­liza­ti­ons of these pat­terns. This hop­efully allows me to deve­lop a bet­ter under­stan­ding of how exactly power asym­me­tries and rela­ted posi­tive feed­back effects emer­ging from exis­ting dif­fe­ren­ces in endow­ments or posi­ti­ons play out in dif­fe­rent con­texts and which rou­ti­nes and moda­li­ties then underly con­crete ine­qua­lity-enhan­cing or explo­ita­tive prac­ti­ces. My very preli­mi­nary rea­dings point to a striking par­al­lel in this con­text, namely the depen­dence of agri­cul­tu­ral pro­du­cers on some ‚middle men’, that extract rents from the for­mer as they pro­vide access to mar­kets. While in glo­bal North count­ries, this role is typi­cally taken by large retail chains, in glo­bal South count­ries these middle-men are often a more infor­mal cha­rac­ter and only inter­me­diate bet­ween local pro­du­cers and local con­su­mers, but also mul­ti­na­tio­nal cor­po­ra­ti­ons. In sum, what comes tog­e­ther here for me is the study of ine­qua­lity and the notion of socio-his­to­ri­cal spe­ci­fi­city – two key ideas I have always been fasci­na­ted with. I sin­ce­rely hope you can share this enthusiasm ;-)

In addi­tion, I am also very curious to find out whe­ther and to what ext­ent our very inter­di­sci­pli­nary group of local par­ti­ci­pants do have a basic intui­tion for the inter­nal fault lines within the eco­no­mic disci­pline and whe­ther they will find hete­ro­dox con­cepts for ana­ly­zing wealth dyna­mics hel­pful and rele­vant. All in all, this should be a very exci­ting and illu­mi­na­ting trip.

All the best,

Jakob
«
* As we focu­sed on soli­ci­ting stu­dent par­ti­ci­pants from Africa, this Sum­mer School was never announ­ced in the News­let­ter. Just in case you think you over­loo­ked it ;-)
Gesam­ten News­let­ter mit Links und Hin­wei­sen lesen (EN)
Alle HEN-Edi­to­ri­als im ifsoblog