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Alt title: 3 Old White Men Discover Colonialsm Bad
Quick reminder that the "Nobel prize in economics" is not actually a Nobel Prize.
(I didn't know this for a very long time, so this may be news to some people reading this.)
The prize wasn’t included in Alfred Nobel’s will and the funding for it doesn’t come from Nobel’s estate (it’s funded by the central bank of Sweden). However, the prize is administered by the Nobel Foundation and announced on their website.
The official name of the prize is THE SVERIGES RIKSBANK PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES IN MEMORY OF ALFRED NOBEL which makes the distinction a bit more clear.
That is interesting to know but I feel that Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is a bit long and the distinction is not really that meaningful.
Either the research is good or it isn't.
People keep attacking the price simply because it was not sponsored by Nobel himself as if only that direct connection to him transferred some sense of divine truthfulness to the other Nobel prizes that this one lacks.
. . . I used to teach this to high school sophomores in World History. To whom is this news?
Economists = a giant cocaine fueled circle jerk.
...consisting of guys born to a fantastic level of wealth who all have to pretend inequality doesn't exist in any capacity what so ever in order to make any of their theories work.
. . . brought to you by some of the same people behind this little gem: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151047929/racist-cake-episode-cuts-swedes-the-wrong-way
How is the culture minister the "same people" as the Royal Academy of Sciences?
Did you also teach your students about ethnic prejudice?
Sorry about that, I mistook you for someone else. The Royal Academy of Sciences doesn't administer the Nobel Prize for Economics, which isn't one of the five official Nobel Prizes and thus overseen by a complex mix of the Swedish government--including the Academy of Sciences--and the Sveringes Riksbank.
Oh boy, ethnic prejudice: my own academic researched focused on borders and migration in colonial and post-colonial states and I taught US and World History on both the high school and college level. Race, racism, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and colonialism/post-colonialism pervade all of those subjects and were constants throughout my curriculum.
The economics prize is funded by Sveringes Riksbank but they are not involved in selecting a winner. Neither is the government. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is solely responsible for selecting the winner, and it is not part of government.
Here's the thing about economics: the "dismal science" is often trying to prove - or disprove - what appears to be common sense.
For instance, to some it's common sense that minimum wage increases cause more unemployment. To others, it's common sense that they don't. Eventually economists will reach a consensus, and it will be "not news" to half the population.
Since you've done research in this field, you must be aware that Acemoglu and Robinson have been publishing on this topic for ~20 years. Is there some earlier economist who was not properly given credit for their results?
My dude, generations historians, economists, and social critics from India and across sub-Saharan Africa have discussed these issues at length. There are libraries full of diverse works on the subject. The erasure of all that is on-brand for the Nobel Prize in Economics (which even Hayek said shouldn't exist in his own acceptance speech) and frankly on-brand for the Western academy as a whole.
South America also has a huge body of work on this.
The prize is for research in economics, not history or social science. They may be interested in the same topics, but economists usually take longer to reach a conclusion because their work is usually more data-driven.
Hence their conclusions appear to be "not news" to historians and social scientists who already believed the same things without the benefit of economic data.
If you'll recall I did mention that postcolonial economists have been discussing this issue.
You did. Is there one economist in particular who you think contributed more to this field than the actual winners?
We really need to avoid this thinking--again, one of Hayak's concern about this particular prize--that any of it comes down to "one person" or one set of research.
I don't think any field of any research comes down to one person. Nevertheless, academics recognize that some people make greater contributions than others.
This is baked into academia in the form of citation. At the moment you wrote your first bibliography you distinguished those who made significant contributions to your own work. It would have been unacceptable to write an academic bibliography consisting of a single line: "All those who came before".
And even though research is always a collaborative effort, like soccer and filmmaking, it is natural for humans to recognize those who made the greatest contributions. That's why we award MVPs to athletes, Oscars to actors, and Nobels to economists.
As a quick semi-aside: 20 years isn't that long in academic research, and it's especially not that long when we're talking about colonialism/post-colonialism. It's a tremendous amount of time in the hard sciences I'm told but it's a mistake to apply that lens here.
That's kind of my point. They didn't come up with their ideas yesterday, so you shouldn't expect the results to appear groundbreaking today.
Ah, gotcha. We're talking at cross-purposes a bit I think.
Thank you for being civil through this; I genuinely appreciate that and it's nice to meet someone else who cares about these issues.
The Swedish government and the Swedish academy are notoriously myopic/tone deaf when it comes to these issues.
*The Nobel Prize Committee
The Nobel Prize is awarded after a lifetime of work, not the latest news.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for describing the violation of Bell inequalities. The initial experiments were performed in the 80s and the results are "not news" to many current high school physics teachers.
That is not true for the Nobel Prize in Economics, which is not one of the five official Nobel Prizes.
It's kind of nice to see formal studies on it though - it might help with aide advocacy.
I'd like that to be true but the reality is the folks in charge will self-congratulate for a moment and then move on to the next "raising awareness" du jour.
First of all, I assume it was news to them when they got it and now it's news to the rest of us.
Secondly, I'm guessing what you taught did not include the research and the mathematics necessary in order for them to get the hard evidence to prove the thing you taught to high school sophomores.
I'm picturing a math or a science teacher saying something like this and it makes me laugh.
Well no, but what I taught to high school sophomore is--believe it or not--based on the research that academics and specialists have been doing for generations. The same is true for high school science and math teachers, by the way.
Thankfully your attempt to look sophisticated allows me to reiterate my point: this has been heavily researched, documented, and explored for several generations now. It's only news to people who have had the privilege of ignoring colonialism; many of them are in positions of authority or prestige. I'd recommend taking a look at the work of Franz Fanon or Aimee Cesaire to get a sense of how far back this line of thinking and research goes. Read that and I'll pass you some more global academic research on the topic.
Has anybody actually looked at the paper instead of reacting to The Guardian's reaction?
Because as bad as the Nobel Prize Committee is at their job, that doesn't look like something you would find in one.
Thank you.
That was my point to the person above criticizing this.
I don't have the skills to review their work so I'm not going to say it's undeserved. And so far, I don't think anyone else commenting does either.
What hysterical was that I was listening to the BBC World Service hourly cast (5 minute summary) and they mentioned everything BUT the colonialism aspect.
Good job whitewashing the ethnic Armenian, OP.
I think that comment was aimed more at the Nobel Prize in Economics committee--administered and funded by Sweden's Riksbank--but your point does stand.