Non-mainstream Dimensions of Global Political Economy, Finance and Labour ― Essays in Honour of Sunanda Sen

The book is a collection of essays written by scholars of global repute in honour of Professor Sunanda Sen. Each paper is well-researched and offers a new dimension to the understanding of the current global crisis, finance and labour including the epistemological viewpoints regarding the current global order. The uniqueness of the book is that in one place, one can find different heterodox positions dealing with the present global order of finance and labour – post-Keynesian, Marxist etc.

The contents of the book can be classified into three major sections – (1) global finance dealing with the current global crisis; (2) methodological/epistemological concerns in terms of the global crisis, and (3) labour in the context of neoliberal global capitalism characterised by the process of financialisation. The entire book is an attempt to decipher the meaning and significance the process of financialisation produces for the real economy. One of the major conclusions drawn from the different studies in the book relates to the fact that global finance, as it has been shaped today, cannot be delinked from the question of labour. The current global finance regime warrants a neoliberal labour flexibility regime, the latter guaranteeing the necessary surplus generation for pervasive finance.

This book offers an analysis of the current global crisis, relating it to present-day global finance and labour in terms of the process of neoliberal financialisation of a flexible labour regime. It is based on a non-mainstream, heterodox approach to economics, and, as such, is a critique of the mainstream neoclassical position on the current global crisis. The contents of the book will be of immense use to researchers and students dealing with the current global crisis, global finance and labour.

Byasdeb Dasgupta pursued his Ph.D under the supervision of Professor Sunanda Sen at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on Third World Debt Crisis during the eighties in 1996. He started his professional career as Lecturer of Economics at the Department of Economics of University where he is still located as Associate Professor. He has visited China and several countries in Europe as Visiting Professor. He had published articles in several journals and books. Also, along with Professor Sunanda Sen, they had written a book Unfreedom and Wage Work – Labour in India’s Manufacturing Industry (SAGE, 2009). Presently Byasdeb is pursuing two research projects – one on Labour Security in Urban Informal Economy and the other on Imperialism – Old and New.