Reconfiguring African Studies, reconfiguring economics: centring intersectionality and social stratification

Abstract

African and African diaspora scholars have made key contributions to contemporary understandings of inequality, intersectionality, institutions and ‘development'. A recent major contribution to this debate is offered by Franklin Obeng-Odoom’s Property, Institutions and Social Stratification in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Drawing on a wide range of literatures, but especially from traditions of Black radical economic thought that span the United States, the Caribbean and Africa, the book calls for intersectional perspectives to be brought to bear on classical institutionalist and stratification economics traditions, in order to rethink ‘development economics’ as we know it. Obeng-Odoom utilises these traditions to make sense of persistent and increasing intra- and inter-group inequalities in Africa and between Africa and the world, showing how classed, raced and gendered identities shape diverse political and economic experiences, including the access to property or employment opportunities. At the same time, Black wo*men economists and wo*men economists of Colour have made notable contributions to the themes addressed by Obeng-Odoom's book – an archive that deserves deep attention. Gathering a collective of feminist economists from and beyond Africa (Abena D. Oduro, Tanita J. Lewis, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko, Sara Stevano, Ingrid Kvangraven), this symposium paper develops a conversation around the themes of intersectionality and social stratification in Africa.