Worlding Home: An Urban Ethnography of Peacekeeping Camps in Goma, DRC. Maren Larsen. Indiana University Press. 2025.

Peacekeeping camps as active processes

Looking behind the walls of a peacekeeping camp – breaking down the physical and conceptual barriers and tracing the many flows and leakages between the camp and the city – is profoundly revealing. In Worlding Home, Maren Larsen offers an intimate and sharply observed account of the embeddedness of United Nations’ peacekeeping camps within both the urban fabric of Goma and the wider global network of humanitarian and military intervention. Peacekeeping camps are the sites where the personnel of a UN mission live and work while stationed in a conflict zone. Focused on the military branch of UN peace operations, Larsen’s ethnography demonstrates that such camp is never a sealed island; rather, it is a porous, eventful, and continuously transforming – improved and “beautified” – space within the city.

The book elegantly weaves together three interconnected geographies: the peacekeeping camp itself, the peacekeepers’ place(s) of origin, and the city of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, where peacekeepers are stationed as part of the UN mission. By moving between these sites, with a focus on the camp, Larsen shows how spatial practices, routine actions and moments, inside and outside the camp co-constitute an urbanism shaped by the logics of “camping”. The camp emerges not as static or exceptional, but as a multi-layered process: the camp keeps changing. Through fine-grained analysis, the book provides the reader with insights into how peacekeepers dwell, how they become embedded in local rhythms while maintaining deep connections to places elsewhere, and how their presence reshapes the urban life they are part of.

An interdisciplinary lens on peacekeeping 

Traditionally, peacekeeping has been the subject of political sciences and international relations, mostly focused on questions of effectiveness and driven by a security lens. Running parallel to this scholarship is a vibrant body of anthropological, sociological, and urban scholarship that interrogates humanitarianism, the international aid industry and infrastructure, and everyday practices of interveners. Within this interdisciplinary landscape, studies of camps – refugee and IDP camps, transit sites, or labour compounds, have been central in illuminating the spatial politics and materiality of encampment. Larsen draws from and contributes to this rich lineage. At the same time, Worlding Home builds upon a long-standing, rich body of research on Goma, a city shaped by decades of humanitarian presence, conflict, and displacement. The book, in line with prior literature, acknowledges Goma as both a humanitarian hub and an epicentre of emergencies that have generated successive layers of encampment, from colonial camps to the massive influx of refugees in the 1990s to the contemporary UN bases. 

Peacekeeping camps constitute active, evolving processes that blur boundaries between dwelling and mobility, as well as between ‘here’ and ‘there’

Mindful of this urban palimpsest of camping, Larsen situates the peacekeeping camp as part of a longer historical and spatial continuum in Goma. From a recent vantage point, she guides the reader through different moves, from outside the camp, to the camp’s fringes and through the gates, inside the camp, to everyday routines and practices, and beyond into global circuits of mobility of people, practices, flavours, and music. Through these movements, Larsen demonstrates that UN camps are neither isolated enclaves nor entirely exceptional spaces. Instead, building on scholarship that conceptualises camps as dynamic social formations, she argues that peacekeeping camps constitute active, evolving processes that blur boundaries between dwelling and mobility, as well as between “here” and “there.” 

A further strength of Worlding Home is its vivid portrayal of the interactions that produce hybrid forms of urbanity. Military peacekeepers in Goma (from places as far away as India, Bangladesh, South Africa, or Uruguay) and Congolese civilians (including children, contractors, or local friends and intimate partners) form both deep and fleeting connections. Larsen details the festivities, the importance of food and eating, the linguistic abilities of kids lingering around the camps (some learn to speak the language of the resident military contingent), and the routines of military culture, both inside the camp and their interaction with the world outside the camp. These scenes illustrate how camps function both as global nodes of UN intervention and as everyday domestic spaces. Indeed, “camping” as practice involves varied interactions that reshape socio-spatial relations, offering new understandings of home-making, global mobility, and urban development under conditions of humanitarian intervention. 

Dilemmas of peace operations 

The book also addresses some of the most pressing dilemmas facing contemporary peace operations: sustainability, blurred lines between humanitarian and military roles, civil-military tensions, and instances of abuse of power. Larsen engages these issues not abstractly but through grounded, often moving ethnographic vignettes. These moments remind the reader that peacekeeping is lived and experienced by individuals navigating complex moral terrains. 

The reader comes away understanding the peacekeepers’ camp as deeply entangled in the life of Goma: a space of global circulation, local negotiation, and everyday improvisation.

Larsen’s focus on the military branch of peace operations is justified and analytically productive, but this choice does narrow the aperture of inquiry. Civilian staff, local NGOs, and the city’s broader population play crucial roles in shaping the social and spatial dynamics of UN bases. Those actors live with chronic insecurity and multi-faceted urban violence. Urban dwellers’ perspectives and place-making in, and with, the camp(s) occasionally appear but are not explored with the same depth as those of uniformed peacekeepers. How, for example, do the many contractors, visitors, camps’ neighbours, and informal workers, shape the camp, and what is their share in “camping”? As a result, the portrayal of Goma sometimes leans more toward an ethnography of camps in a city rather than an ethnography of the city with camps, including its long-term urban, environmental, social, cultural, and economic consequences. Readers may find themselves wanting more sustained engagement with the urban residents whose daily lives intersect with, support, challenge, or adapt to the presence of peacekeeping infrastructures. 

Peacekeeping camps’ place in the world 

This desire for more in no way diminishes the book’s accomplishment. Worlding Home offers an invaluable perspective on what peacekeeping camps are and what they do in the world. It shows that the peacekeeping camp is not merely a site but a process – what Larsen aptly calls “eventful happenings” – embedded within urban space. The book illuminates these processes with nuance, empathy, and theoretical sophistication. 

In the end, the reader comes away understanding the peacekeepers’ camp as deeply entangled in the life of Goma: a space of global circulation, local negotiation, and everyday improvisation. Worlding Home stands as a perceptive and timely contribution to the study of peace operations in an urban context and the anthropology of encampment. It invites us to rethink what it means to make a home – however temporary – amid intervention, and what it means for a city to continually absorb, reshape, and respond to the demands of those who camp within it.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Understanding Political Economy: Capitalism, Democracy and Inequality. Bob Hancké, Toon Van Overbeke and Dustin Voss. Edward Elgar Publishing. 2025.

How do capitalism, democracy and inequality hold together? Bob Hancké, Toon Van Overbeke and Dustin Voss’s Understanding Political Economy: Capitalism, Democracy and Inequality unpacks the tensions between markets, political authority and social outcomes. Building on traditions ranging from classical political economy to comparative political economy and the varieties of capitalism literatures (like the work of Karl Polanyi, Adam Przeworski and Peter A. Hall and David Soskice), the authors offer a synthetic and accessible framework that links interests, ideas and institutions. What distinguishes this volume is less a single theoretical innovation than its integrative ambition. Rather than advancing a new model, the book provides readers with an analytical tool to understand why, in an increasingly interdependent world, capitalist democracies produce distinctly different welfare regimes, persistent inequality and fragile forms of cooperation. 

The book begins by situating political economy in its historical context. Economic processes, the authors argue, cannot be understood in isolation from social relations and political authority. Political economy is therefore defined by its attention to the triangular relationship between economy, society and politics as a relationship that becomes especially visible in moments of crisis. From this point, the authors explore the uneasy relationship between capitalism and democracy. Markets depend on political institutions to function, yet capitalist accumulation routinely produces inequality that undermines democratic legitimacy. Democratic systems promise political equality, but rarely deliver economic equality. Rather than treating this contradiction as a failure or anomaly, the book treats it as a defining feature of capitalist democracies, echoing Adam Przeworski’s thesis that democracy and capitalism coexist through continuous political compromise. Political economy is not about resolving tensions between markets and democracy, but rather how societies manage or mismanage them.

Interests, ideas and institutions 

The book’s core argument rests on three elements that shape political economy: interests, ideas, and institutions. Interests shape political preferences and conflicts, yet they are unevenly represented and not always transparent. Organised actors with concentrated benefits such as firms or professional groups are often better positioned to influence policy than diffuse constituencies like low-income workers. Collective action problems, organisational capacity and power asymmetries all shape whose interests are translated into outcomes. Ideas mediate how actors understand their interests and legitimate political choices. Economic paradigms such as Keynesianism or neoliberalism do not simply reflect material conditions. They provide narratives that define problems, constrain solutions and stabilise institutional arrangements. In periods of uncertainty, ideas become especially powerful, aligning actors and justifying policy shifts that might otherwise be politically costly. Institutions, in turn, structure behaviour over time. Formal rules and informal norms shape incentives, coordinate expectations and lock societies into particular development paths, as seen in Germany’s coordinated market economy where strong vocational training systems and works councils have sustain a high-skill, export-oriented growth model. Institutional arrangements differ across countries, producing models of capitalism that persist even under shared global pressures. 

The extensive bank bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis offer a clear example of how states act as market-makers, even in economies commonly described as ‘free market’.

The discussion continues with the political construction of markets. Rather than treating state intervention as an exception to market logic, they show that markets are always embedded in political authority. States create markets, regulate competition, manage crises and shape technological trajectories. The extensive bank bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis offer a clear example of how states act as market-makers, even in economies commonly described as “free market”. Welfare states are presented as political-economic institutions designed to manage the risks generated by market economies. By pooling risks across individuals and over time, welfare systems have historically stabilised capitalist democracies. Yet, this book shows why these arrangements are under strain. Demographic ageing, fiscal constraints, labour-market segmentation and political polarisation have weakened the coalitions that once sustained expansive welfare regimes. In Germany, for example, population ageing and the growth of dual labour markets since the Hartz reforms have eroded support for solidaristic welfare provision, as protections for labour-market insiders have increasingly diverged from those available to outsiders. The result is not only retrenchment but growing tension over who deserves protection and on what terms. 

Why do democracies tolerate economic inequality? 

The book also addressees a basic puzzle: if all citizens have an equal vote, why do democratic societies still accept high levels of economic inequality? In theory, democracy should allow the majority to demand policies that reduce gaps between rich and poor. In practice, this rarely happens as the share of income captured by the top 10 per cent has increased markedly in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The authors, then, show that inequality persists for several political reasons. Electoral systems shape whose voices are heard, as lower voter turnout and campaign finance rules often give greater influence to wealthier groups. Research by Martine Gilens and Benjamin Page (2014), for instance, shows that policy outcomes in the United States are far more responsive to affluent voters than to the median citizen. At the same time, political debates are often framed around identity issues such as nationality, moral values, culture rather than economic concerns. As a result, inequality should be understood as the outcome of political processes rather than purely market forces. Democratic institutions do not automatically turn popular preferences into redistributive policies, especially when economic conflicts are overshadowed by identity-based divisions.  

Governments often struggle to work together effectively […] agreements often settle for the weakest option that everyone can accept, rather than what is actually needed.

The final section explores the problem of cooperation. Issues such as climate change, migration, monetary policy and public health require coordination across borders. Yet governments often struggle to work together effectively, as illustrated by the uneven international responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors explain this difficulty in two ways. First, international decision-making systems are often complex and involve many actors. This makes it hard to reach solutions, even when most countries broadly agree on the goals. Second, government must negotiate at both domestic and international level. Domestic political pressures such as opposition from voters, interest groups or political parties can limit what governments are willing or able to commit to internationally. As a result, agreements often settle for the weakest option that everyone can accept, rather than what is actually needed. In short, the authors argue that cooperation can work when institutions are designed carefully. When costs and benefits are shared more fairly as well as having long-term commitment, countries are more likely to overcome barriers to cooperation.   

All in all, by foregrounding the interaction of interests, ideas and institutions, the book shows why economic outcomes cannot be understood through either the market or  politics in isolation. Capitalism operates through political choices, social power and institutional rules that shape who benefits and who bears the costs. The authors also effectively show how inequality, welfare arrangements and patterns of cooperation are the results of political processes rather than natural or inevitable outcomes. This perspective helps explain why similar economies develop in very different ways, why democratic systems often struggle to reduce inequality and why cross-border cooperation remains so difficult in an interconnected world. However, the book remains more diagnostic than prescriptive, offering a powerful framework for understanding political-economic tensions while leaving open the question of how democratic institutions might be reformed to address them.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India. Sanjaya Baru. Penguin Random House India. 2025.

Drivers of Indian migration 

Indians take pride in being the world’s largest democracy and the fastest growing major economy, but the realities of governance in a vastly multicultural country pose a great challenge. Several systemic weaknesses are contributing to outward migration, from India’s archaic tax regime and bureaucratic overreach to deep socio-economic inequalities and a widening trust deficit among the country’s diverse ethnic groups. And it’s not just blue-collar workers: relatively well-off Indians are emigrating in growing numbers. As a result, Indians have become the largest diaspora in the world, a trend that has accelerated in the last two decades. 

In Secession of the Successful, Sanjaya Baru, a political economist and one of India’s foremost public intellectuals, analyses different waves of Indian emigration in the past 200 years, tracing the changing socio-economic nature of each wave. The book is situated at the intersection of public policy and governance studies and adds to the existing body of literature on migration from the developing to the developed world. It comes at a time when debate over immigration and the tightening of immigration policy is raging worldwide, with no sign of abating. 

As India’s elite increasingly move overseas, by taking up residency or acquiring citizenship, they disassociate themselves from India’s future.

According to Baru, Indians have historically migrated to distant lands, but emigration in large numbers can be traced back to the early 19th century when the colonial state transported people as indentured labour. This first wave was followed by a second one in the 1960s that comprised of semi-skilled workers travelling to Gulf in search of higher wages. Baru clarifies that he prefers the term “overseas” over “diaspora” as the latter does not capture the social, economic, and regional diversity of overseas Indians (90). Referring to overseas Indians as Pravasi Bhartiya (Non-Resident Indian) is also faulty, he contends, since it fails to inspire overseas Indians to either return or invest more in the home economy, an explicit objective of the Indian government (39). 

Brain and wealth drain or “secession of the successful” 

The book is more focused on understanding the third wave of emigration, beginning in the 1970s, and the fourth wave, coinciding with the dawn of the 21st century. These two waves, comprising largely of middle-class professionals and high-net worth individuals (HNIs), is what Baru collectively refer to as “elite migration”– a term he adapts from Devesh Kapur’s work on the domestic impact of international migration from India. This group, constituting India’s social, economic and power elite, comprises the major chunk of those emigrating in the third and the fourth waves and amounts to what Baru calls the “secession of the successful”. This is because as India’s elite increasingly move overseas, by taking up residency or acquiring citizenship, they disassociate themselves from India’s future. The fourth wave is, however, distinct from the third, as the push and pull factors coalesce to the “ease of living” overseas – broadly implying better living standards and less state interference – compared to India. 

The flight of India’s elite is in turn reigniting the debate over “bran drain” in developing societies (44). Whether the emigration of Indians is something to celebrate or regret is a recurrent question the book raises. By referring to the works of economists like Dadabhai Naoroji, Jagdish Bhagwati and V.M. Dandekar, among other international economists like Harry G. Johnson, Herbert Grubel and Anthony Scott, Baru unpacks the debate of around the effects of migration from developing to developed societies. The combined effect of skilled labour migration is an international transfer of resources in the form of human capital, often referred to as the “brain drain” (49). While several top Indian officials and leaders, from Manmohan Singh to Narendra Modi, have hailed brain gain over brain drain, Baru suggests this official endorsement for emigration has accelerated and legitimised the latter (61). This loss of human capital is accompanied by a drain of wealth due to the flight of HNIs (138), both of which negatively impact the economy. Another impact of the mass emigration of India’s youth means that ageing parents are left without care. This calls for the Indian state to make policies that cater to the needs of the elderly (164). 

Religious and political implications of emigration 

Another emerging trend among the Indian diaspora is growing public assertion of religion fused with political mobilisation (196). Unlike previously, when India sought to protect the interests of its diaspora in countries with significant communities of overseas Indians, such as in Fiji, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, rising political divisions among this diverse diaspora, particularly in the West, is hurting its image and harming India’s bilateral relations with friendly countries like Canada (204). Baru gives the example of overseas Hindu Indians, showing how their political activism and religion-infused nationalism have promoted the cause of “Global Hindutva” (207). 

The irony with such ‘Globalised Indian Nationalists’ is that their religious nationalism does not translate into a desire to return home

The irony with such “Globalised Indian Nationalists” is that their religious nationalism does not translate into a desire to return home (212). In fact, most of the professionals and wealthy overseas Indians rarely return, whom Baru calls “Non-Returning Indians” (43). Moreover, concerns from host countries over their political activism and potential impacts on India’s democracy has prompted Indian diplomatic efforts to counter alleged anti-India activities (218). This has made overseas Indians, as Baru says, both a diplomatic bridge and a political challenge to be managed. 

India and rising anti-immigration policy worldwide 

Overseas Indians, until now, have reaped the benefits of liberal immigration regimes in the West, while enjoying a favourable portrayal as “good citizens” in the Gulf. But this may be imperilled as anti-immigration sentiments grow worldwide. Already, protectionist leader Donald Trump has curtailed the issuance of H-1B visas in the US, curtailing a key access route for skilled labour and qualified professionals from abroad. In a scenario of reduced opportunities in the world labour market, managing migration has become increasinlgy difficult and contentious for sender and host countries. 

The book could have been improved by incorporating a broader range of existing academic works on development and governance in India. For example, Dipankar Gupta argues in his book The Caged Phoenix (2010) that India’s phenomenal growth has not translated into development due to high levels of income and wealth inequality. Baru does cite data on economic and wealth inequality in India, but does not clearly link it with his main argument. Moreover, in in his 2019 book, India’s Power Elite, Baru situates his analysis of the changing caste and class composition of India’s elite within the existing theoretical literature on elites to build a strong argument. Secession of the Successful lacks a similarly robust and compelling theoretical framework to make its case. 

Nevertheless, the book grapples with pressing questions. It will be a valuable resource for both a general audience interested in the causes and effects of Indian emigration, and public policy officials dealing with managing migration. Overall, Secession of the Successful make a significant contribution to the understanding of the future of democracy, and debates around the ease of living in India.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Benjamin Selwyn will speak about the book at an event hosted by LSE Department of International Development on Wednesday 18 March 2026 find details and register to attend.

Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics. Benjamin Selwyn and Christin Bernhold. Oxford University Press. 2025.

“All countries stand to benefit from the increased trade and commerce spurred by the growth of GVCs.” – World Development Report 2020 

Everyone knows about upgrading. Upgrade your phone, your computer, your software – there are newer, better models or ways of doing things that you simply must have! If you’re not into consumerism, you may not care about upgrading. But if you’re interested in international development, you should.  

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are the arteries of global capitalism, through which around 70 per cent of international trade occurs.

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are the arteries of global capitalism, through which around 70 per cent of international trade occurs. GVCs are networks of production occurring in different countries where supplier firms provide lead firms (often Transnational Corporations, TNCs) with products and services. Think of your laptop or smartphone – quintessential products of GVCs.  

Upgrading in GVCs represents a key development strategy, promoted by international institutions and many academics. It refers to innovations by supplier firms, as they deliver goods and services to lead firms, to improve production, produce new products, take on new activities within a given GVC, and enter larger and more lucrative export markets. Lead firms determine production in GVCs (in the academic lexicon, they ‘govern’ their chains) – deciding upon what is produced, how, with what materials, under what conditions and even what prices suppliers receive.  

There are myriad cases of successful upgrading. Does that mean that we should adopt it as a universal development strategy? Absolutely not. Upgrading by supplier firms is possible, but it is not generalisable. The notion that upgrading is a generalisable development strategy is a classic case of the fallacy of composition. This is the assumption that what is possible, and developmentally positive, for one firm or sector can be replicated by other firms and sectors. 

How workers are exploited through GVCs 

In Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics, co-authored with Christin Bernhold, we detail and explain the deleterious developmental, environmental, and international relational impacts of GVCs. First, to upgrade, supplier firms collaborate with lead firms. They employ workers to produce goods profitably, for themselves and for lead firms. The proliferation of GVCs has been based upon the establishment of the biggest labouring class the world has ever seen. It has also been based on the proliferation of highly exploitative work. 

In GVCs, workers are effectively exploited by two firms – producing surplus value for their direct employers and for the lead firms who capture shares of that value.

Workers are exploited because they receive in wages less than the value of what they produce. That additional value is captured by their employers. This, Marx shows, is the secret of surplus value creation and capture under capitalism. Across numerous chains workers are subject to immiserating exploitation, where they receive below living wages. In GVCs, workers are effectively exploited by two firms – producing surplus value for their direct employers and for the lead firms who capture shares of that value. 

Upgrading in one place means downgrading in another 

Second, upgrading by some firms or sectors generates intense uneven development – the downgrading of other firms and sectors. In the 1990s Vietnamese coffee producers upgraded by entering the global coffee market. Their vast exports depressed coffee prices globally. According to the International Coffee Organisation, in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua, consequences included reduced farmer incomes, abandonment of farms, and widespread job losses. 

China’s hyper industrialisation is often touted as a successful and replicable case of upgrading. However, the flip-side of China’s industrialisation, has been the de-industrialisation and reprimarisation of countries like Brazil and Argentina. These countries increasingly depend on a narrow range of primary exports. For example, in Brazil land devoted to soy has displaced land from traditional domestic food crops such as rice and beans, and has pushed up prices. One consequence was that in 2022, 33 million Brazilians faced hunger. 

Disastrous environmental impacts of Global Value Chains 

Thirdly, upgrading into and the proliferation of GVCs has contributed directly to our planet’s environmental disaster. The geographic dispersal of production through GVCs entails more infrastructure (air and seaports, rail and road transportation, digital tech and data servers) and an enlarged world market.  

The global material footprint – the total amount of raw materials extracted to meet final consumption demands – increased by 113 per cent between 1990 and 2017.

The rising quantity of world production and trade requires more material use. The global material footprint – the total amount of raw materials extracted to meet final consumption demands – increased by 113 per cent between 1990 and 2017, from 43 to 92 billion metric tonnes. It is projected to grow to 190 billion metric tons by 2060. 

Technological development, trade and geopolitics 

Fourthly, upgrading in, and the proliferation of, GVCs are quintessentially geopolitical. In the late 1950s the US established state-funded agencies which invested and coordinated research into what would become radar, computers, integrated circuits, semiconductors and most famously, the internet. These technologies were then deployed from the 1970s onwards by US firms, and then other nationally rooted firms, to relocate production – while tightly governing these chains – to countries with cheap, highly exploitable, labour forces.  

The prime destination for this investment was China. But the Chinese state, with its unique central coordination mechanisms, used its integration into value chains to become a workshop of the world, before evolving into a challenger to US technological primacy. The response from the US – from Obama, Trump 1.0, Biden and now Trump 2.0 – has been, through tariffs and export controls, to “actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry – strangling with an intent to kill”. 

Dismantling capitalist value chains 

To reiterate, upgrading in GVCs happens a lot. But it is not a universalizable development strategy. Rather, it is based upon labour exploitation, and generates intense uneven development, environmental destruction and geopolitical conflict.  

Rather than cheering on the expansion of GVCs, those of us concerned about international development and inequality need to think beyond such structures.

So, what, really, are GVCs?  GVCs are capitalist value chains: mechanisms whereby capitalist classes extend their capacity to exploit labour and appropriate nature beyond national borders. They underpin the huge concentration of wealth, for example in Silicon Valley – based on below-living wage work in China and elsewhere. They are supported geopolitically, as mechanisms of control and surplus value extraction, and transfer across borders.  

Rather than cheering on the expansion of GVCs, those of us concerned about international development and inequality need to think beyond such structures. Supporting economic democracy and production for human need and the environment, rather than for profit, are ways we can challenge the myopic, exploitative and destructive GVCs-for-Development ideology.

Note: This post gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations. Carl Benedikt Frey. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Progress is fragile. According to Carl Benedikt Frey, it requires a delicate sequence of innovation and efficient application. This explains why the world is now threatened by low growth. Vested interests dampen the US’s ability to leverage its decentralised economy for innovation, while greater centralisation in China puts their dynamism at risk.

The driver of ‘progress’ is technology. Whether states can leverage growth from tech depends on the circumstances

For such a sweeping general history (covering the economic progress of nations over the past 1,000 years) Frey’s argument is nuanced. The driver of “progress” is technology. Whether states can leverage growth from tech depends on the circumstances, and specifically whether there are already technological innovations ready to be utilised (what he calls “low hanging fruit”). If not, decentralised “exploration” is required to push the technological frontier before centralised “exploitation” can take advantage. Vertically organised bureaucracies such as those found during the Meiji restoration in Japan (1868) were able to rapidly exploit new technologies, such as railways, because of their ability, and will, to apply techniques at economies of scale. Bismarckian Prussia, underpinned by a comprehensive education system, libraries, robust investment banks and hierarchical management in both civil service and corporations, could exploit advances in chemicals and machine tools in the 19th century. 

Decentralised innovation and diffused knowledge 

According to Frey’s argument, Meiji Japan and Bismarckian Germany were only successful because technological innovation had taken place elsewhere (through decentralised, horizontally structured organisations). Two key examples of decentralised “exploration” are the Industrial Revolution in the UK (c.1750 to 1900) and the so-called Second Industrial Revolution in the US (c.1870 to 1914). The industrial revolution was, in Joel Mokyr’s well-known argument, characterised by inventors and tinkerers who played with new technologies and adapted them alongside others in learned societies and informal networks. This is exactly the horizontal diffusion of knowledge Frey sees as key to decentralised innovation. As Frey notes, the “Birmingham Lunar Society” included the inventors of latent heat (Joseph Black) and the steam engine (James Watt) and the industrial revolution took place in Britain because of a dearth of “stifling” centralised bureaucracy. 

The UK was the most inventive country from the mid-18th century until 1825, after which, according to Frey, the US took up that mantle. The central driver of US dynamism was its decentralised federal system, which is now under threat due to increases in corporate lobbying and vested interests stifling innovation. However, Frey’s prime example of a decentralised innovation engine is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Notably, DARPA was a government organisation set up in response to Sputnik which gave scientists a large degree of independence to test out ideas and  enabled the development of the internet. 

Implementation case studies from Russia to China 

Frey’s training as a historian leads to  a satisfyingly complex analysis. Not all centralised bureaucracies are effective at implementation. Russia under Peter the Great was a centralised state which was too autocratic to implement new technologies at scale. The nature of the technology in question also impacts which tool of leverage is most appropriate. The Soviet Union was able to catch up in the mid 20th century through vertical hierarchical organisation and bureaucracy. While this centralised approach worked for heavy industry it didn’t work for the computer age, and their inability to capitalise contributed to falling growth in the 1970s and 1980s. 

China occupies a complex position within Frey’s constellation. It has the most storied state bureaucracy, established over 1000 years ago. Counterintuitively, according to Frey, China’s massive meritocratic state spurred the development of technologies from 1000-1400 making it the most technologically advanced polity in the world. However, this system dampened ‘diversity of thought’ over the long run in contrast to European local governance”. This reached its apex during the pragmatic reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s involving the creation of special economic zones. His persistently pragmatic approach to reform (According to a recent report China is now ahead of the US in 57 of 64 critical technology categories. Interestingly, while Chinese solar mega projects centrally steered the fate of the global effort to prevent climate breakdown relies on China halting new coal plants, a policy area which was decentralised to provincial governments in 2014. Crucially, in Frey’s view, China’s dynamism is under threat of decline if the spirit of Deng’s decentralizing policies is not retained. 

The limits of a “stagist” understanding of progress 

Frey’s focus on “frontier technologies” assumes a stagist approach to technological history.This approach has been critiqued most famously by Edgerton in his seminal The Shock of the Old (2006), and recently by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz in his 2025 book More and More and More. Does progress really just rest on exploiting new technologies, given that they are almost always mixed up and hard to entangle from older ones? For example, training and harnessing AI requires massive energy, enabling gulf states to become major players. China’s recent AI+ energy strategy sets out a plan for a decentralised approach to AI diffusion and building the grid around AI. It’s not clear that the states which benefit most from AI won’t be those who have best exploited older technologies, such as nuclear and solar energy. 

Was Deepseek R1 an innovation in new methods of leveraging hardware, or an exploitation of algorithms developed in the US? When does the sheer scale of Chinese implementation (rolling out more solar at the beginning of 2025 than the US has in its entire history) also become its own form of innovation, rather than simply ‘catching-up’?

Frey’s distinction between “invention” and ‘implementation’ also warrants interrogation. It follows Edgerton’s focus on the use of technologies as more historically significant than invention. Similarly, in his recent Technology and the Rise of Great Powers (2024) Jeffrey Ding argues that the state which can diffuse technology most effectively (not who can come up with leading inventions) is most likely to benefit from technological change. (Surprisingly, neither of these books are included in Frey’s bibliography). Frey’s argument is more nuanced than Ding’s, since his view of whether invention or implementation is more important depends on whether there are technologies available for exploiting. Still, the clean distinction in both books is tested by examples like the Taylorian factory system. Is it an example of innovation or implementation? Was Deepseek R1 an innovation in new methods of leveraging hardware, or an exploitation of algorithms developed in the US? When does the sheer scale of Chinese implementation (rolling out more solar at the beginning of 2025 than the US has in its entire history) also become its own form of innovation, rather than simply “catching-up”?  

This book fits into a growing network of opinion that predicts US economic decline because of its inability to re-learn to build in the face of vested interests (including ‘nimbys’, lobbyists, regulators, legal challengers)

Frey does not go as far as to prescribe policy based on his analysis, but this book fits into a growing network of opinion that predicts US economic decline because of its inability to re-learn to build in the face of vested interests (including “nimbys”, lobbyists, regulators, legal challengers). Ezra Klein and Dan Wang, among others, have recently written books adding weight to transatlantic calls to say ‘Yes in My Back Yard’.  

Explaining something as complex as the success of economies through the neat lens of institutional and technological structure is a tall order. Frey does so with rigour. Given the uncertainty of the present, the book should be taken not as a masterplan for progress to be exploited wholesale, but a set of principles to be tinkered with, adapted and explored.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Carl Benedikt Frey will speak at LSE at a public event at 6.30pm on Tuesday 21 October 2025. Find details and register.

Main image: StockCake.

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City of Equals. Jonathan Wolff and Avner de Shalit. Oxford University Press. 2023.

Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit’s recent collaboration, City of Equals, is a love letter to the city. The city has long been an unloved creature, its dwellers depicted as alienated and rootless. City of Equals rebuts this tale of woe by exploring the forms of egalitarian rootedness and place-making that can flourish within the city. Combining analytic philosophy with qualitative research methods, and drawing on urban studies, sociology, and political geography, it will be of interest to scholars working across disciplines, urban planners and policymakers, and those who call cities home. While there are works that examine justice within the city and the injustices that are specific to cities, Wolff and de-Shalit have produced a novel account of egalitarianism for the city.

What makes a “city of equals”?

Wolff and de-Shalit set out to discover what it means for a city to embody the egalitarian spirit – what constitutes a “city of equals.” Material equality is one obvious answer; but, Wolff and de-Shalit note, cities with significant income inequality, such as Berkeley, California can nevertheless qualify as egalitarian in spirit. There must be, they surmise, something more to egalitarianism than the distribution of resources. Instead, the authors are moved by relational accounts of equality, “less interested in making sure that everyone has the same amount of anything that ca n be distributed among them, but rather that each person has good reason to regard each other as an equal, and be regarded as an equal by them” (13).

What does it mean to have the sense that you are being treated as an equal? Wolff and de-Shalit turn to 182 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2019 by stopping “city-zens” – those who reside within the city boundaries (15) – in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, London, Oxford, New York City, and Rio de Janeiro. They do not explain the choice of cities other than to note that these cities range in size, significance, dominant religion, and national political context (20). The authors concede this is not a representative sample, locally or globally; however, they treat interviews as a trampoline that “enables you to gain an elevated viewpoint, thus freeing yourself from the solid ground of your position,” (18) and providing sight of questions and ideas not visible from the ground. The interviews therefore expand the authors’ point of view even when they do not provide an expansive or representative perspective (18).

Securing a sense of place

Wolff and de-Shalit provide an account of a “city of equals” which, at heart, is a city that “offer[s] each individual a secure sense of place.” The concept of a “sense of place” emerges from attachments to a particular setting or place, which can arise from one’s direct personal and family biography, or be mediated through collective narratives that imbue a place with meaning, for example, for cultural, religious or ethnic identities. We have a sense of place for a particular location, then, because it is where we fell in and out of love, where a religious figure was martyred, or where an ancient battle was lost. This sense may be shared or communicable, but it need not be universal; it is a changing set of relations with the artefacts, facilities, and people in a particular location. A component of one’s identity, a sense of place contributes to one’s wellbeing, and enables other components of wellbeing, including the capacity to be tolerant of others and thereby enable their sense of place.

Cities are home to most of the world’s population, are responsible for nearly 80 per cent of states’ GDPs, and increasingly dictate national politics

Wolff and de-Shalit identify four core values that engender a sense of place: 1: access to municipal services is not marketised; 2: there is equal opportunity to achieve a sense of a meaningful life; 3: diversity and social mixing in the absence of a monolithic culture; and 4: inclusion that does not rely on deference or submissiveness, but instead is enjoyed as a matter of right. They conclude by proposing that these core values be used to form an index for cities to use as a self-audit: they can help a city to “understand its own trajectory, looking back over the months and years, and to consider what it needs to do in order to come closer to a city of equals” (171).

A “city of equals” in an unequal nation

City of Equals is a much-needed enquiry into egalitarianism in the city informed by interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative mixed methods. Wolff and de-Shalit do not see it as the final word so much as a starting point that establishes the city as its own site of enquiry. At its heart lies the belief that egalitarians should care about equality at the level of the city, and that equality at this level is a distinct enterprise. One reason to care about equality in cities is their sheer size and significance: as Wolff and de-Shalit note, cities are home to most of the world’s population, are responsible for nearly 80 per cent of states’ GDPs, and increasingly dictate national politics (5).

But that is not to say urban equality can represent equality more generally. Wolff and de-Shalit insist that the city is a different sort of political institution from the state, with different political functions and hence a different understanding of equality. Fair enough. However, if cities increasingly determine economic and political life at the national and global level, what equality means in the city may inevitably inform practices and conceptions of equality at the national level. For example, a “sense of place,” which is amorphous and varied, might be more apt for immigrants than the existing paradigm of national integration. This is not only because most immigrants move to cities; it is also because the integration paradigm presupposes a “community of value” that is often exclusionary, on grounds of race, religion, and class, for immigrants and citizens alike. A “sense of place” provides an alternative way of belonging and living together – one that also contributes to one’s wellbeing and identity, but without requiring conformity with a national culture or set of values. Equality in the city might therefore bleed into equality in the state in ways that are generative and inclusive.

Many Arabs in the east of Jerusalem feel that they live under occupation and that Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem experience the city in very different, and unequal, ways

In turn, inequality at the national level might infect the city. More than a third of Wolff and de-Shalit’s interviews are conducted in Israel, which Israeli and international organisations have since concluded maintains an apartheid regime, including in East Jerusalem. The authors describe how these inequalities impinge on the egalitarian possibilities there: they note that many Arabs in the east of Jerusalem “feel that they live under occupation” and that “Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem experience the city in very different, and unequal, ways” (86). But this raises some politically urgent questions: How do city-zens retain an egalitarian ethos amid pervasive inequalities? And how do egalitarians in the city protect everyone’s sense of a place against the inequities imposed from above?

As Wolff and de-Shalit note, cities are often politically progressive and can be engines of change in national and global politics. But this may require that city-zens, from cities embedded in deeply unequal states, to the “sanctuary cities” targeted by the Trump administration, to the cities with mounting unhoused populations, not be complacent about their egalitarian credentials. It may be that a “city of equals” can only exist in a nation of equals, and that it falls to city-zens, with a secure sense of place and a willingness to look one another in the eye, to realise both.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: William Perugini on Shutterstock.

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Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places. Paul Collier. Penguin. 2025 (paperback); 2024 (hardback).

Clergy and journalists have a duty to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In his new book Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places, Sir Paul Collier urges economists to assume that same burden. He does so by explicating the causes of and remedies for inequality at three levels: the nation, the locality, and the group. Less a “new economics” than a multidisciplinary overview of how societies succeed or fail, Collier’s erudition and experience allow him to make a compelling argument for his preferred polices.    

Where many economists would have offered their top-down blueprint for reconciling the imperatives of capital with Rawlsian redistribution, Left Behind leverages history to warn against centralised decision making.

Beyond a handful of Nobel laureates, few people on Earth could bring more credentials to the task. Collier has a lengthy publication record, but this book draws on decades of experience across the world with leaders at all levels. He’s discussed long-run growth with central bankers in Jackson Hole and advised the mayor of Bogotá on urban development. In Burma he made the acquaintance of Aung San Suu Kyi and then met with a guerilla smuggling timber across the Thai border. All that before one mentions the continent where he resides (Europe) or the focus of his work (Africa). 

Problems with top-down governance 

The book starts with Collier’s normative definition of success: economic growth benefiting a wide swath of the population. He justifies this approach by citing Michael Sandel’s notion of “contributive justice,” arguing that its conclusions align with findings in social psychology and evolutionary biology. For those who find such arguments abstruse, he also makes a pragmatic case: “Social exclusion wastes talent.” But where many economists would have offered their top-down blueprint for reconciling the imperatives of capital with Rawlsian redistribution, Left Behind leverages history to warn against centralised decision making.  

Collier pays tribute to the probity of Julius Nyerere before explaining how that man’s affinity for import substitution wrecked Tanzania. Vladimer Putin entrenched his own power when he abolished the election of Russian governors in 2004. But even when Putin appoints credible leaders, their orientation towards Moscow inevitably holds back growth in Russia’s hinterlands. The book reserves its most impassioned criticism for the UK. In Collier’s telling, the precocious young elites setting policy for Whitehall might have impressive credentials, but their ignorance of local conditions in places like South Yorkshire inevitably leads to policies myopically focused on London and its environs. 

Guiding theory through practice 

While the book finds over-centralisation at the heart of most policy failures, its solutions are more diffuse. Instead of relying on economic theory to guide practice, this book starts with exemplary cases studies, then works backward to understand how they benefited the common weal. A chapter on leadership details how Seretse Khama’s astute policies allowed Botswana to transcend clan-based division and benefit from its diamond mines, even as the same mineral wrought catastrophe in Sierra Leone. Leaders with personal integrity are necessary but insufficient for a healthy body politic: people can and must form organic associations like churches and unions from the bottom up. Few locales would have seemed less suitable for such an undertaking than Franco’s Spain, but Father José María Arizmendiarrieta knew better. He established Mondragon, the network of workers’ cooperatives that helped the Basque region weather deindustrialization. Today it employs over 70,000 people. Post-Soviet Estonia declined to set high school curriculum at the national level, but still manages to outperform the rest of Europe in testing. Again and again, Collier shows that in the face of uncertainty, running multiple imperfect experiments often produces better results than solutions imposed by distant “experts.” 

This book all but demands that readers take an active, personal stake in their communities.

Devolved authority grants agency, but also responsibility. Joyce Banda in Malawi showed Collier first-hand that a woman president could match her male counterparts in both courage and corruption. When plans for widening a road in Kampala leaked, Ugandans began squatting on the adjacent land. Naïve Western donors mistook those opportunists for victims, raising compensation payments until they had built, mile for mile, the world’s most expensive road. This book excoriates the feckless and corrupt leaders of South Africa’s ANC for squandering the opportunities afforded them after the fall of apartheid. Half a century after decolonization, Collier shows that genuine concern for Africa’s poor demands that their leaders move past outdated excuses. 

Community participation and the role of the private sector 

This book all but demands that readers take an active, personal stake in their communities. What choice could an undergrad have after learning about Collier’s former student Abir Hasan, founder of the Youth Policy Forum in Bangladesh? The humblest bureaucrat can aspire to emulate Andrés Velasco and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, finance ministers who established sovereign funds and then held the line against irresponsible populist spending in Chile and Nigeria, respectively. Few aspiring philanthropists will ever do more for the downtrodden than Marcel Arnault, the American businessman who built a viable commercial lender in Mogadishu. 

The book makes an excellent case for pushing decisions to their lowest feasible level, but Collier still hesitates to endorse the free market that allows buyers and sellers to make their own choices.

The book makes an excellent case for pushing decisions to their lowest feasible level, but Collier still hesitates to endorse the free market that allows buyers and sellers to make their own choices. He concedes that market forces “… can work well enough for modest purposes like matching consumers with producers, but they cannot cope with the vastly more complex task of determining the best future distribution of thriving cities.” Better policies might inhibit regional inequality, but anyone hoping to affect such a distribution would be wise to account for market forces like transport costs, agglomeration, and economies of scale. Elsewhere the author remarks that “competition drives many companies into being greedy,” when it actually drives profits down. When discussing “the perils of financialization,” Collier seems to think that pension funds employ hapless ingénues unable to read an income statement. While much of the book reads like a paean to local communities, Left Behind never quite musters that same respect for the private sector.    

Collier has scant regard for the management class, but he has even less for the activists, academics, and intellectuals who trumpet their commitment to the poor without considering the circumstances and trade-offs that circumscribe their lives. Despite those constraints and largely on their own initiative, over one and a half billion people escaped extreme poverty in recent decades. Anyone looking for a concise and accessible account of how this happened would do well to read Left Behind.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Lucian Coman on Shutterstock.

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Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful. Mirca Madianou. Polity. 2025.

The rise of technocolonialism

Technocolonialism is a powerful and well-documented examination of how digital technologies are transforming humanitarianism in ways that reinforce colonial structures. Its author, Mirca Madianou, is a researcher with almost a decade of experience in this area, and she recently led a British Academy-funded project on digital identity programmes in refugee camps in Thailand. The research for this book involved an ethnography of the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan (2013-2015); an ethnography through the “digital humanitarianism project” with interviews conducted online and in person with people based in London, Cambridge, Athens, New York and Washington between 2016-2021; and extensive secondary research. 

The volume examines multiple cases across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas to identify recurring patterns in digital humanitarianism in recent decades. These patterns are theorised into six main “logics” (accountability, audit, capitalism, technological solutionism, securitisation, and resistance) presented in Chapter One. Together, they form the main concept “technocolonialism”, capturing how colonial genealogies persist in today’s digital humanitarianism. With this, the author contributes to ongoing debates about how digital technologies are reshaping humanitarianism in ways that reproduce colonial relations, extractivist structures, and new forms of inequality. Scholars such as Vicki Squire and Modesta Aloize have referred to this dynamic as the “coloniality of humanitarianism”. On other hand, Olivier Jutel employs the term “crypto-colonialism” to critique blockchain-based humanitarian interventions as forms of techno-experimentation rooted in neoliberal and colonial logics. More broadly, postcolonial and decolonial scholars such as Gertjan van Stam, Shakir Mohamed, Marie-Therese Png, William Isaac have explored how digital technologies perpetuate colonial legacies in multiple ways.  

Biometric surveillance of refugees 

The book explores how the six logics interact and materialise in various contexts as distinct forms of technocolonialism, with one chapter for each. Madianou offers an original approach by connecting decolonial and postcolonial perspectives with infrastructural and platform frames in digital technology studies. In Chapter Two, she focuses on the use of biometric and blockchain technologies in Jordan’s Za’atari Refugee Camp, the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world, granting aid only to those refugees who submit to biometric identification. They are also limited to purchasing goods in designated stores whose prices are usually higher than local alternatives. Madianou critiques biometric systems as instruments of epistemic violence, grounded in “infrastructural whiteness”. She posits that they reproduce racialised logics of exclusion by classification categories and surveillance practices imposed from the outside. 

Extractive AI support systems 

In Chapter Three, Madianou examines digital humanitarian responses following Typhoon Haiyan, a category-five typhoon which struck the Philippines on 8 November 2013 at 4.40 am. Her research reveals how digital feedback systems are narrow, extractive, and embedded in Western epistemologies, reinforcing Eurocentric systems of knowledge and control. Much of the digital applications such as chatbots used for empowering affected communities were designed in the Global North and coded in English. As result, this apps designed by and for international actors, not local communities, excluded many local voices that were invisible to the system. Chapter Four then presents how digital humanitarianism experimentation mirrors colonial science practices, particularly in the field of medicine under imperialism. Today, such experiments occur outside the traditional laboratory walls in humanitarianism zones as refugees’ camps, where data and value are extracted through digital infrastructures that are increasingly invisible and normalised. Madianou calls this dynamic “surreptitious experimentation”, often conducted without meaningful consent or processes of accountability. One example is the untested chatbot “Karim”, launched by a Silicon Valley start-up X2AI and designed to provide mental health support to Syrian refugees in Lebanon. This was not created with the input of human therapists, but rather a language-processing AI that imitated human conversations. Refugees did not give their informed consent for the use of their data, nor were they offered alternative forms of support if they refused to engage with Karim. 

The humanitarian machine 

In Chapter Five, the author proposes the concept of the “Humanitarian Machine” as the concrete representation of material and digital infrastructure that brings together private companies, governments, donors, policies and affected populations alongside innovations like biometrics, chatbots, and satellite data. By focusing on infrastructure, Madianou tracks how data flows between these actors and identifies who benefits most. She argues that digital infrastructures perpetuate colonial genealogies by reproducing hierarchies and automating mechanisms of exclusion and inequalities. In Kenya, for example, the Proxy Means Test algorithm worked with machine learning models to determine who needed help and who did not. The error rate excluded several thousand people who were left without assistance. Support staff were unable to provide solutions or override the automated results as the system was surrounded in bureaucratic opacity and lack of transparency. 

Everyday acts of resistance 

In Chapter Six introduces the concept of “mundane resistance”, challenging the view of technocolonialism as a monolithic force. Instead, Madianou shows how digital infrastructures are always contested spaces, where control coexists in tension with everyday acts of resistance. This co-production of digital humanitarianism reflects the constant interplay between structure and agency in specific contexts. This includes the collective mobilisation of people in the Philippines who refused to use the SMS service implemented after Typhoon Haiyan because its automatic messages failed to provide clear answers. It encompasses video and photo testimonies and social media campaign led by refugees in the Moria camp in Greece documenting poor conditions and human rights violations, which served as evidence in the defence of six young refugees accused of arson. In this way, Madianou attests to the agency and resistance of those receiving aid who reappropriate digital devices to challenge the system. 

Infrastructural violence and colonial legacies 

The final chapter reiterates the conceptual importance of technocolonialism, which, Madianou argues, should not be used metaphorically, or to suggest a new historical phase. Rather, it is intended as a tool for analysing the material continuities of colonial legacies in the nexus of states, capitalism, humanitarianism, digital technologies and infrastructures. For Madianou, digital infrastructure is the connective tissue that shapes the humanitarian space. She emphasises the concept of “infrastructural violence” to frame how harm is embedded, normalised and legitimised within these digital technologies. Applications like biometrics, chatbots, feedback loops, and AI do not merely replicate colonial power dynamics; they amplify them in new forms of inequalities between the Global North and South. 

With this book, Madianou offers a compelling intervention in the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s call to “brush history against the grain”. She achieves this by revealing the interrelation between current technological systems used within the humanitarian sphere and traditional colonial systems of extraction, exploitation and control. The resulting volume is a powerful reflection on how technology under capitalism not only creates dependencies and inequalities that enrich the few while claiming to support the most vulnerable; it also perpetuates colonial legacies that reach far beyond the humanitarianism sphere in any other daily uses.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mirca Madianou spoke about the book at a public LSE event in 2024, Technocolonialism: when technology for good can be harmful. Watch it on YouTube.

Main image: Biometric scanning of a refugee child in Chad by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid on Flickr. License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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How Africa Eats: Trade, Food Security and Climate Risks. Edited by David Luke. LSE Press. 2025.

Africa is facing a troubling rise in food insecurity, with more than one in five people unable to access sufficient nutritious food. In How Africa Eats: Trade, Food Security and Climate Risks, edited by David Luke, scholars and practitioners explain why, by focusing on the trade-related drivers of hunger on the continent. Compiling research undertaken by the African Trade Policy Programme at LSE’s Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, the book’s ten chapters converge on a central message: without a sharp focus on trade policy, African countries will remain mired in food insecurity, and climate change will only magnify the challenge. 

The roots of Africa’s food insecurity  

The volume begins by tracing food insecurity in Africa to a deep-seated structural imbalance: an agricultural sector focused on exporting raw commodities whilst relying heavily on imports of consumable food. Today, 82 per cent of African countries’ basic food comes from outside the continent, and 16 African countries spend over 40 per cent of their export revenue on food imports. 

Every country’s domestic support allowance is tied to the value of its agricultural production. This automatically constrains African nations, whose production values are low compared to wealthy countries.

The authors argue that stagnating export volumes and values, compounded by the mounting pressures of climate change require a rapid and fundamental shift in the continent’s trade make-up. Through extensive data visualisations, they bring fresh urgency to the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis which contends that over time, the price of primary commodities declines relative to that of manufactured goods, due to differences in income elasticity of demand. The book’s early chapters establish the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis as an observable reality, underscoring the vulnerability of African economies locked into commodity-export dependence, and pointing to the urgent need for structural transformation.

The paradox of subsidies 

Subsequent chapters focus on trade flows and regulations within and outside the continent. A standout contribution is the chapter devoted to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) legal framework. Authors Van der Ven and Luke frame their analysis in a profound yet under-appreciated paradox: “subsidies in countries that can afford them contribute to global food availability but disincentivise production in poorer countries through price suppression.” 

Against this backdrop, they unpack the rules and intricacies of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and related mechanisms with clarity and precision, exposing an over-arching framework that systematically disadvantages all but a handful of countries. For instance, every country’s domestic support allowance is tied to the value of its agricultural production. This automatically constrains African nations, whose production values are low compared to wealthy countries. As a result, just four WTO members (the EU, Japan, USA, and Mexico) hold 88.4 per cent of the total allowances for trade-distorting agricultural subsidies known as the Final Bound Total Aggregate Measurement of Support (FBTAMS). 

A chapter on the expected impact of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) underlines the importance of dismantling non-tariff barriers, improving infrastructure and cross-border coordination

However, as the chapter goes on to explain, unfair rules are only part of the story. Many African countries struggle to make full use of the allowances and preferences they do have, such as those under the “Development Box” due to institutional, technical and financial constraints. Compounding this, reductions in global subsidies could drive up the cost of food imports for Africa, especially since any increase in local production would take time.  
 

How global trade rules disadvantage Africa

The story of global trade rules stifling Africa’s agricultural exports is re-told through the lens of bilateral trade in a separate chapter by Vinaye Dey Ancharaz. Ancharaz examines the continent’s evolving relationships with key partners, from the EU and the US, to rising players like Brazil, India, and China. We see how even preferential access schemes like the EU’s Everything But Arms concession and the US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) fall short of expectations. While these arrangements offer duty-free access to African exporters, in practice they are undermined by exceptions and complex non-tariff barriers. For example, the EU applies temporary restrictions on imports of sugar, fruits, vegetables, poultry and meat, which are already aided by subsidies and tariff protection. These “special safeguard measures” are permissible under WTO rules. Non-tariff barriers, especially those related to food safety and hygiene are also major hurdles. To illustrate, the author provides the striking example of baby squash and courgettes from Zambia, which were considered for export following the enactment of AGOA in 2001, but received the green light more than seven years later. 

Conflicting policy interests and staple food vulnerability

The chapter also addresses recent developments on regulations to curb climate emissions and improve sustainability which risk morphing into a new form of trade protectionism. Using the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (2023) as a case in point, the author invites readers to consider whether climate goals can be pursued without deepening global trade inequities. In a similar vein, a chapter on the expected impact of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) underlines the importance of dismantling non-tariff barriers, improving infrastructure and cross-border coordination to realise the full benefits of an already largely liberalised continent. 

A chapter titled “What Africa Eats – the basic foods” by Olawale Ogunkola and Vinaye Dey Ancharaz provides valuable insights on the eight most widely consumed foods on the continent by calorie intake. The consumption, production, trade, and climate vulnerability profiles of each one is analysed in detail based on publicly available data from the Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Yams turn out to be the only staple for which production keeps pace with consumption. For every other major food source, (cassava, maize, rice, wheat, poultry, meat, and fish) demand consistently outstrips production and yields are far below the global average. Based on this, the authors position improvements in productivity as core to Africa’s food security strategy, conceding that in some cases (meat for instance), this may compromise climate resilience. 

Alternative ways to secure quality food 

In focusing on caloric sufficiency however, the authors sideline nutritional quality. Hidden hunger is widespread across the continent and centring the analysis on calories leads to a framing of food security that prioritises quantity over quality. Considering the nutritional makeup of the African plate could open the door to more holistic policy responses. Investing in indigenous crops like millets, sorghum, and legumes, for example, offers a double dividend: these foods are nutrient-dense and well-suited to the continent’s changing climate. Unfortunately, the authors seem to dismiss such actions as too modest, arguing instead for shifts in trade policy to drive transformation.  

The volume provides a rich account of how trade flows and frameworks shape food insecurity across Africa.

Given the authors’ emphasis on import dependency, it is also surprising that no reference is made to food sovereignty movements which advocate for more local control over food systems to reduce reliance on volatile global markets, while also enhancing nutrition and livelihoods. Such perspectives are essential for the continent’s long-term resilience.

Overall, the volume provides a rich account of how trade flows and frameworks shape food insecurity across Africa. It offers pragmatic guidance to practitioners and policymakers interested in the continent’s food future. In a policy space peppered with difficult trade-offs, competing interests, and inertia, the authors succeed in identifying several actionable levers for reform. These include African countries advocating for a special safeguard mechanism to protect domestic producers from import surges, signing the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, and participating in discussions on repurposing subsidies to improve environmental outcomes. How Africa Eats makes a key contribution to the scholarship. I hope it sparks deeper engagement with the structural drivers of food insecurity on the continent and generates the strategic policy responses it calls for.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main Image Credit: Kabai Ken on Wikimedia Commons.

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The post The state of food security in Africa first appeared on LSE Review of Books.

Artery: Racial Ecologies on Colombia’s Magdalena River. Austin Zeiderman. Duke University Press. 2025.

Aboard a towboat navigating Colombia’s Magdalena River, Austin Zeiderman’s Artery begins with a moment of profound discomfort. The anthropologist finds himself sick from drinking the vessel’s tap water which the crew assured him was safe. When he mentions his illness to the deckhands, their response is telling: “It may be fine for us, but it’s certainly not for you (3)”. This encounter, simultaneously mundane and revelatory, opens a sophisticated exploration of how racial hierarchies and environmental relationships have been intertwined along one of South America’s most important waterways.  

The Magdalena River and Colombia’s racial ecologies

Zeiderman positions the Magdalena River not merely as a backdrop for human activity, but as a central actor in Colombia’s racial and environmental history. From the early 16th century to the present, this 1,500-kilometer artery has connected the Andean interior to the Caribbean coast, serving as a conduit for conquest, slavery, trade, and modern logistics operations. The river’s social and natural histories are so intertwined, Zeiderman argues, that it makes little sense to separate them. 

The book’s temporal scope is ambitious, stretching from Spanish colonial rule through contemporary megaprojects designed to transform the Magdalena into a “logistics corridor.” Yet rather than offering a sweeping historical narrative, Zeiderman employs what he calls a “fine-grained analysis of situated practices, specific actors, and ordinary events.” This methodological choice proves particularly effective in revealing how grand historical forces manifest in everyday encounters – like a white researcher’s stomach troubles on a riverboat.

Afro-descendant communities along the lower Magdalena, despite their historical centrality to river transport, remain marginalised within new configurations of power.

The concept of “racial ecologies”, advanced by LeiLani Nishime and Kim Hester Williams in their 2018 edited volume, creates an anchor for the book. It refers to how racial hierarchies and environmental relationships have been mutually constituted, demonstrated through the historical figure of the boga – the enslaved Indigenous and African boatmen who powered river transport for centuries, these workers were not simply exploited labourers but were understood through racial taxonomies that positioned them as “evolutionarily closer to tropical nature” and therefore genetically suited to riverboat work. What makes Zeiderman’s analysis particularly compelling is his attention to how these historical formations persist in new configurations. Contemporary riverboat workers continue to be understood as possessing bodies uniquely adapted to the river’s demands, even as they themselves invoke these very categories to explain their resilience. The author faces discomfort with this dynamic by recognising both his own racial assumptions and the deployment of racialised explanations which exemplifies the book’s reflexive approach to these complex entanglements. 

Power and inequality in river development projects 

Central to Artery is also an analysis of Colombia’s recent efforts to revitalise the Magdalena as a commercial shipping route through massive dredging and channelling projects. These interventions, part of the country’s post-conflict development strategy, promise economic growth and territorial integration. However, Zeiderman reveals how such “sociotechnical imaginaries” collectively held visions of technological progress and reproduce rather than challenge existing inequalities. The logistics industry that increasingly dominates river commerce operates according to what Zeiderman terms “supply chain security,” a rationality focused on ensuring uninterrupted circulation of goods. This system of value creates hierarchies that render some people and places as security threats while protecting others. The predominantly Afro-descendant communities along the lower Magdalena, despite their historical centrality to river transport, remain marginalised within these new configurations of power. 

A nuanced methodological approach 

One of the book’s most significant contributions lies in its methodological approach to studying large-scale transformations. The author advocates for moving between micro and macro scales of analysis, arguing that, “paradoxically”, undertaking fine-grained analysis enables us to better understand planetary processes. This approach allows him to trace connections between a researcher’s illness in reaction to drinking local water and centuries of racialised exploitation without resorting to deterministic explanations. Zeiderman’s commitment to what he calls “critical but not denunciatory” analysis is noteworthy. Rather than simply condemning contemporary logistics projects, he maintains analytical openness to contingency and unexpected outcomes. This stance, influenced by Stuart Hall’s concept of articulation, allows for a more nuanced understanding of how historical forces operate in specific contexts. 

Artery successfully navigates between multiple academic fields including but not limited to anthropology, geography, environmental studies, and critical race theory without sacrificing accessibility. The prose is deliberately light on theoretical jargon, privileging ethnographic detail and contextual specificity. The result is a work that speaks to specialists while remaining accessible to broader audiences interested in questions of environmental justice and racial inequality. The book’s structure, moving from historical analysis through contemporary logistics operations to questions of navigation and gender, builds a cumulative argument about the persistence and transformation of racial ecologies. Each chapter contributes ethnographic detail while advancing the broader theoretical framework. 

Scope, limits and new approaches to research

While Artery succeeds in its ambitious scope, some readers may wish for more detailed analysis of resistance movements and alternative futures. Though Zeiderman acknowledges that infrastructures have served as sites of “insurgency and insurrection,” the book focuses primarily on how existing systems reproduce inequality rather than exploring transformative possibilities in depth. Additionally, while the author’s reflexive approach to his own racial positioning is admirable, the analysis might benefit from more systematic engagement with Colombian scholars and activists working on these issues. The book occasionally reads as an outsider’s interpretation of local dynamics, despite its ethnographic grounding. 

For anyone seeking to understand how colonial legacies operate in contemporary development projects, or how environmental and racial justice movements might find common ground, Artery offers essential insights.

Artery makes important contributions to several ongoing academic and political conversations. For scholars of race and racism, it demonstrates how racial formations operate through environmental relationships rather than despite them. For environmental researchers, it reveals how ecological degradation and racial subordination have been mutually constituted. For those interested in logistics and infrastructure, it shows how seemingly technical projects reproduce historical patterns of exploitation. Perhaps most significantly, Zeiderman offers a model for engaged scholarship that takes seriously both the urgency of contemporary crises and the complexity of addressing them. In a moment when climate emergency and resurgent racial issues demand analytical and political responses, Artery provides tools for understanding their intersection while avoiding simplistic solutions. 

The book succeeds in its goal of “unsettling” rather than simply denouncing problematic formations. By the end, readers will have a deeper appreciation for how the currents of race and nature flow together through landscapes, histories, and bodies in ways that resist easy separation. For anyone seeking to understand how colonial legacies operate in contemporary development projects, or how environmental and racial justice movements might find common ground, Artery offers essential insights.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Austin Zeiderman displayed a research poster about the book at LSE Festival Exhibition 2025 – view the PDF poster and listen to the accompanying audio.

Main Image Credit: oscar garces on Shutterstock.

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The post How race, environment and capitalist development interact on Colombia’s Magdalena River first appeared on LSE Review of Books.