Abstract

This session brings together George DeMartino, author of The Tragic Science: How Economists Cause Harm (Even as they Aspire to do Good) with members of CERN-Sydney who have spent time reading and discussing its ideas in the first half of 2023. 

Two key ideas formed the basis for the discussion: George’s argument that the mainstream discipline of economics conceives of harm—as inevitable, harm as something that can be compensated for, and that the economist’s job is to decide between harms and objectively choose between them—serves to trivialize harm. The true danger that he identifies is when this disposition to harm operates in the context of irreparable ignorance—the condition that we can never fully know or anticipate the consequences of our actions, and the damage that can be caused by acting like we know, when we do not. The first two decades of the 21st century, the growing manifestation of climate change are testament to the consequences of this conceit. 

In the book George endeavours to imagine what an economics discipline might look like if it were harm-centric, that is what would the practice of economics look like if we were to foreground potential harms in making decisions? What is/or could be the relationship be between this harm-centric thinking strategy and those that have animated the diverse economies project? What does Harm-centric thinking have to say about the nature of economic-experiments that aim to produce more liveable and more than capitalists worlds? How might such an approach reposition the “local” as an appropriate site for social transformation? How do we think about harm in human and more than human contexts? These are just a few of the questions that might be taken up. The ideal participant would be someone who has read the book or is curious about it.