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Multiplicity is the defining concept of the Cluster of Excellence "Africa Multiple". It is through relations that multiple modes of existence, values, forms of knowledge and performances in areas like identity, politics, production, mobility, and consumption come into being. As much as the idea of multiplicity should be celebrated for both its epistemological and emancipatory potential, there is a a danger to gloss over social fields where multiplicity has actually been actually reversed through the workings of power, ideology and hegemony.

Economics in Africa is one such fields, writes Professor Howard Stein, a renowned development economist from the University of Michigan. Professor Stein has been visiting the Cluster as a guest from June 13 to 17th, 2022. During his time in Bayreuth, he spent time mentoring graduate students, and gave a lecture on “ Ideas on the Move: On the Institutionalization of Neoclassical Economics in Africa”, which drew on a recent paper published in Economy and Society”. While Zambian economist Grieve Chelwa recently found that economics has an “Africa problem”, Professor Stein finds that Africa has also developed an “economics problem”. Professor Stein was invited by the the Chair of Economic Geography.

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