What is the New Trade Theory?

Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei, member of the Post-Colonialisms Today Working Group, discusses the role of the state in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stiglitz answers the question why globalization and world trade has not delivered on its promise of increased well being as much as classical economists thought, by pointing to the power asymmetries: firstly, between industrialized nations and developing nations and secondly, between special corporate interest and social interests. In his analysis, developed countries and MNCs were able to extract the benefits, while shifting the costs (i.e. pollution) to states and communities with lesser power. Amongst many other historical examples the pharmaceutical and the mining industry are discussed to some length.

In this article, Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei and Camden Goetz discuss the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Africa’s natural resources.

What are the debates, feminist and otherwise, surrounding the phenomena of globalization? How does a gendered lens complicate our understandings of neoliberal globalization? How are particular labor regimes integral to global restructuring, and how are these gendered? What are the implications of global restructuring for bodies, identities, relations, and movements?