Provocations & Conversations | Entangled

Entangled is inspired by a series of nature based narratives that draw on observations and fieldnotes collected during my life long work as an economist. They are offered as a poetic rendering of years of research and practice that track how powerful and subtle encounters within everyday experience transformed my understanding of what economics is and how it can be practiced. Economics presents itself as an objective science, detached from the messy particularities of everyday life. But what if economists are not outside the economy, observing it from a safe distance, but entangled within the very realities they seek to explain. Economic theories do not merely describe worlds, they help constitute them through the ways of thinking and practice that guide policy, institutions and everyday decisions. If this is so, then the question is not “How can economics become more objective?” but “What kind of world does our economic thinking bring into being—and what worlds does it make difficult to see?” Session Host: Dr. Julie Richardson is a writer, teacher and practitioner of different approaches to economics. She is pioneering a new entangled approach to economic thinking and practice which explores the skills and capacities needed to navigate economic landscapes rooted in direct experience rather than being governed by abstract models and theories.