Left, Right and Centre: On Regrounding a Progressive Political Economy of Africa for the Twenty-First Century

This essay examines “political economy” (vis-a-vis Africa and more generally) as an essential approach but one that is diverse in its meanings and implications. It begins by emphasizing both its political and its economic resonances and also its necessary openness to approaches related to gender, to racial differentiations, to religion, national/ethnic belonging, and to environmental/ ecological concerns. The various understandings of social reality that the approach can give rise to are then explained in terms to its status as a necessarily “moralizing social science,” a foundational conceptualization that is discussed here at some length. Three diverse versions of “political economy” that spring from this are then discussed: the Political Economy of the Enrages (from the Left); The Political Economy of the Entitled (from the Right and Centre-Right); and The Political Economy of the Afterthought (as articulated by those of left-leaning liberal and social democratic persuasion). In this manner the case is made that the critical political economy of the committed “enrage” will - while remaining eminently “scientific” in its approach - enable us to focus most effectively on the various crucial social, economic and political realities that we as social scientists must seek to illuminate in Africa and beyond.