Alternative Academics: Post Autistic Economics

Have you ever felt that strong disagreement with an economics article you have read, but never had the chance to actually debate it? Have you ever come out of an economics tutorial feeling that your tutor’s ideas made terrific sense in theory but failed to explain the suffering and poverty of world around us? Whether you are a economics student, an anthropologist who has never opened an economics textbook in his life, or an astronomist lost in stars and black holes, you have a contribution to make!! Your perspectives, your doubts and challenges are un unrecognized asset for the development of this subject.

PAE (Post Autistic Economics) is about opening up economics and launching a critical but constructive debate on its doctrines. PAE is about trying to create a new story when the old one we are sold is not accurate and insightful enough! Economists are a remarkably conservative class of scholars: it took 20 years for the economists at the IMF to realize that their structural adjustment policies simply failed in most of the cases, although evidence has been available for a long time. Many died and suffered in the meanwhile.

Here in Oxford our syllabi seldom give us the possibility to reflect on a plurality of views- we are stuck with a single model and a single truth. Let us change this together!

Learn more about the ideas behind the Post Autistic Economics movement at the PAE workshop on Sunday! And remember: it is not a lecture or a long boring speech, it is an open debate!

“…Economics is science in some senses, but is at the same time ideology… ”
Peter Söderbaum

To find out more about PAE on the web go to: www.paecon.net