Political Economy Of Development In Palestine: A Critical Perspective
Political economy is concerned with institutions, relations of power, and social conflict and struggle. A key task of political economy is to historicize and (re)politicize economics, as politics and economics are deeply inter-related and reside in (and emerge from) particular social, spatial, and historical locations. Political economy, therefore, aims to denaturalize capitalism in order to obtain a more robust analysis of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and neoliberalism.
In the case of occupied Palestine, a political economy approach matters when analysing the current situation, as it unveils critical elements of both the material and discursive (visible and invisible) expressions of power. It [a political economy approach] also underscores that an approach to economics that does not consider the political—a de-politicized economics—is inadequate to understanding the situation in occupied Palestine.
In my latest co-edited volume, Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, and Decolonial Perspectives, co-edited with Dr. Tariq Dana and Dr. Timothy Seidel, published in May 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan, and composed of 14 chapters, we offer an in-depth contextualization of the Palestinian political economy, analyse the political economy of integration, fragmentation, and inequality, and explore and problematize multiple sectors and themes of political economy in the absence of sovereignty.
A key aspect that emerged as part of this book and the collective scholarly effort, is related to the utmost need to study the political economy of Palestine through critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives. We argue that using critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives on political economy sharpens a focus on resistance and aids in the exploration of embodied forms of political subjectivity, especially in neoliberal, settler colonial contexts. Such approach provides a more robust framework to understand the complex dynamics of the development process, and illustrates why, how, and by whom development is denied in Palestine.
