{"id":6979,"date":"2021-03-25T17:13:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T17:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/habib.edu.pk\/HU-news\/?p=6979"},"modified":"2025-07-25T17:11:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T12:11:41","slug":"post-colonial-capitalism-causing-human-exploitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/habib.edu.pk\/HU-news\/post-colonial-capitalism-causing-human-exploitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-colonial capitalism causing human exploitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a world that operates on the prospect of growth-based economic development, an argument for \u2018degrowth\u2019 has been proposed as a pathway to sustainable living on this planet, avoid climate disasters and ensure the survival of low-income countries.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Concerns such as these were put forward in the session on \u201cRepairing Economies\u201d session during Habib University\u2019s fourth Post-colonial Higher Education Conference. The central theme of the conference was \u201cDecolonial Thought in the Global Ruins\u201d. It featured Dr. Nauman Naqvi, Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities and chair of the conference, while it was moderated by Dr. Aqdas Afzal, Assistant Professor and Director of the Social Development and Policy Program.<\/p>\n

The esteemed panel of guests included Dr. Georgios Kallis, Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, and Dr. Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kallis, who has authored \u201cThe Case for Degrowth\u201d, put forward the idea of how growth and economic development is actually linked to colonialism. He narrated the history of \u2018degrowth\u2019 in the context of post-development and how the standard models of growth-based development were essentially western-inspired. Scholars who discovered this had argued that the colonizing process continued in the guise of development projects and that the West ultimately exported this model to the rest of the world. Through it, the US and Europe controlled what they wished to control: a flow of natural and human resources to economies, low price of labor, and low prices of natural resources.<\/p>\n

He went on to explain that critiques of growth say that they have a link to the process of colonization. This sort of \u2018imaginary capitalism\u2019 began with early capitalism in 18th century England and was exported to the rest of the world. The universe allows GDP growth-based economic development and there are very few alternatives to this, not to mention, very few voices to question the model itself.<\/p>\n

It is a colonizing imagination, he argued. This process from the very beginning has been integrated with the process of colonization from those who wish to show us the good side of economic growth and capitalism.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kallis explained that in the long-term, the entire process of economic growth that brought goods with it and elevated living standards, had a huge ecological and human cost: it was tied to human exploitation, such as slave labor and gender-based exploitation, especially of the unpaid work of women in households without which economic growth would not have taken off as it has.<\/p>\n

He put forward the analysis that the call of growth is an effort to decolonize the imaginary \u2013 to decolonize the dominant idea of the future of economic growth. The prevailing critique is that colonization is not just an idea but a political and material process that is inflicted on the bodies of people and home nations. In this sense, Dr. Kallis refers to degrowth as a decolonizing proposal.<\/p>\n

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Watch the session<\/strong><\/p>\n