1000 word summary of Quaid-e-Azam Lecture at PSDE 33rd AGM held on 14th Dec, 2017 at Islamabad. Published in Express Tribune & the Nation 13th Jan 2018. 43m Video Lecture on YouTube: The main thesis of our lecture is that our quest for prosperity has failed to deliver the sought-after goals because we have misunderstood the meaning of prosperity , and looked… Read More Prosperity as Human Development, not Wealth
shortlink for this post: bit.do/azgtr Polanyi offers a deep historical study of how European societies based on traditional values of cooperation and social responsibility were tansformed into modern secular societies. In Polanyi’s terminology, social relations became embedded within the market, creating a market society driven by the imperative of commercialization, which makes money the measure… Read More Resources for Study of Polanyi’s Great Transformation
Because of Western dominance, brilliant thinkers from the East get very little attention in global media. Even though brilliant economists from East Asia and China have created globally acknowledged economic miracles in their countries, none of them have received a Nobel Prize. On the other hand, Western economists whose theories were demonstrably in conflict with… Read More The Human Development Revolution
Part 2 of Lecture on Spirituality and Development: Friday, 27th Jan 2017 by Dr. Asad Zaman, VC PIDE — for Students of Religion & Development Paper, Center of Development Studies, University of Cambridge. Link for part 1: Spirituality . 50m Video lecture: OUTLINE OF LECTURE: The meaning of development has varied dramatically across time, space, cultures. When Britannia… Read More Spirituality and Development: Part 2, Development
{bit.ly/AZSpirit} Friday, 26th Jan 2017: Lecture by Dr. Asad Zaman, VC PIDE to students at University of Cambridge, Center of Development Studies for Religion & Development paper. 40 minute video recording of lecture on you-tube. For related posts, see: An Islamic Approach to Humanities. Part 1: “What Is Spirituality?”: Modern Secular thought takes spirituality and religion to… Read More Spirituality & Development
The adventure of leaving home, and exposure to unlimited educational opportunities as well as a radically different social environment, made us heady with excitement as freshmen at MIT. We often stayed up all night discussing our new experiences. Since we could not come to any conclusion regarding the most important question we face: “what is… Read More Blind Spots of Modern Education
One of the core and central properties of markets is that they lead to increasing concentration of wealth at the top. This is because market allocations of goods and services respond to money, automatically conferring great power to those with wealth. For instance, market incentives lead to the production of luxury handbags and briefcases for… Read More Market Myths and Realities
{bit.ly/HEccc} Modern economic theory is founded on the principle that human beings “maximize utility”; that is, they choose the best action from among a collection of choices. This axiom is considered self-evident: why would anyone make an inferior choice, when a better option is available? However, the mathematical formulation of this axiom is far from… Read More Homo Economicus: Cold, Calculating & Callous
Market fundamentalism refers to a deep-seated ideological belief in the magical powers of the free market to solve any economic and social problem. The term ‘fundamentalism’ conveys the quasi-religious certainty expressed by contemporary advocates of the free market, who continue to maintain the belief in face of overwhelming amounts of empirical evidence to the contrary.… Read More Market Fundamentalism
Draft of chapter for Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. Editor Clive Spash. Forthcoming ABSTRACT: In face of the strong conflict between market norms and social norms, peaceful co-existence is impossible. In traditional societies, markets were subordinated to society. Modern society emerged via a number of revolutions which made society subordinate to markets.… Read More Markets and Society
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