The Meeting Place - Black and Iranian Feminist Political Economics

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Our seventh and final episode of Season 2 features our newest DISE member, Dr. Atyeh Ashtari! As a highly interdisciplinary scholar born and raised in Iran, she provides a fresh and nuanced perspective on transnational solidarity. Dr. Ashtari illustrates how Black Feminist scholarship, through concepts such as lived experience and intersectionality, allowed her to put this scholarship in conversation with that of Iranian feminist political economics. As she and your host, Serena Bahadur, traverse the lives and roles of the Iranian women in the informal and formal economy, the illusion of their homogeneity breaks and the role of Sandooq becomes clear. For the first time on the Diverse Economies for Youth podcast, we welcome you to listen in on why Iranian and Black solidarity in scholarship and beyond can bring us closer to the collectivity and humanity we seek. Take the plunge and learn what we might find when we finally arrive at our meeting place.

About

Dr. Atyeh Ashtari is an Iranian professor of City and Regional Planning. She recently completed her doctoral degree in Urban Planning at the University of Illinois. As an incredibly interdisciplinary scholar, her studies lie within the realms of intersectional humane urbanism, sustainable community-based development, community economies, and critical feminist methodologies, just to name a few. In doing so, Dr. Ashtari always centers community as her main unit of analysis and emphasis. She has co-authored several publications, such as “Constructing Solidaries For a Humane Urbanism”, with many more forthcoming. Dr. Ashtari has served as an organizer for the Iranian Heritage Foundation, received the Mariam K. Chamberlain Dissertation Award from the International Center for Research on Women, and is currently the Vice President of ACSP’s Faculty Women’s Interest Group.

The Meeting Place - Black and Iranian Feminist Political Economics with Dr. Atyeh Ashtari

Diverse Economies for Youth - Hosted by Serena Bahadur

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Taking a Side - Inclusive Economies Over Extractive World Systems

How can we start building the inclusive economies of tomorrow? Would it be to identify our struggles as part of a collective resistance? Would it be in the voices we choose to hear, or what kinds of labor we consider ‘work’? This is an opportunity to fortify your mind and take a side! As the world becomes increasingly politicized, volatile and damaged, the option to be neutral is disappearing. Immerse yourself in this conversation between our newest guest Dr. Beverley Mullings, and your host Serena Bahadur, as they traverse the complex and fortifying path away from the extractive world system of the past and present, and into the inclusive economies of our future.

About

Dr. Beverley Mullings is a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto. Since obtaining her PhD in Geography from McGill University, her work as an economic geographer has always highlighted the importance of voice. As a professor, person and DISE Collective member, Dr. Mullings is conscious of the voices she highlights in her writing and teaching. She strives to show her students, her communities, and the world the diversity we need to embrace when considering our perception of the economy, and therefore our future. In fact, she was recognized by the American Association of Geographers in 2017 when she received the Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award. This is a testament to her desire and leadership towards guiding the growth of those who come after her. Additionally, Dr. Mullings is a huge advocate for mental health in and out the academy, currently co-chairing the Association of American Geographers Mental Health and Academy Affinity Group. 

Taking a Side - Inclusive Economies Over Extractive World Systems with Dr. Beverley Mullings

Diverse Economies for Youth - Hosted by Serena Bahadur

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The Value of Membership Based Institutions

What do you imagine when you hear the word ‘institution’? Typically, we might imagine schools, police forces, and hospitals. These are what our newest guest Dr. Hossein calls ‘front-facing’ institutions, in her conversation with host Serena Bahadur. But there are many more invisible institutions that work behind the scenes, often securing the wellbeing of communities in times when the institutions we readily recognize systemically ignore us. How can membership-based institutions enrich us? Join us on this episode to explore what is not always seen, and yet always exists.

About

As an Associate Professor of Global Development, Dr. Hossein teaches the core development course at the PhD level to students in the University of Toronto’s Political Science programme. She is also a tier- 2 Canada Research Chair for Africana Development & Feminist Political Economy. She holds an Ontario Early Researcher Award, serves as a board member to the International Association of Feminist Economics, advisor to the Oxford University Press, editorial board member to the U.N. Task Force for the Social and Solidarity Economy, and Review for Black Political Economy. Dr. Hossein has authored, co-authored, and edited many books, including ‘Politicized Microfinance’, ‘The Black Social Economy’, and her newest, ‘Beyond Racial Capitalism: Cooperatives in the African Diaspora’. Dr. Hossein also works alongside the Banker Ladies, a community of Black and racialized women engaging with solidarity economies for self-sufficiency.

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The Value of Membership Based Institutions with Dr. Caroline Hossein

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For the 99% Feminist Economics for Solidarity Economies

Economics is usually taught as if we all interact with the economy in the same way, even though we know it is not “one size fits all”. Feminist economics, as guest professor Dr. Bergeron and your host Serena Bahadur discuss, allows us to acknowledge and affirm our identities and how this impacts our economic experiences. With a mainstream economy built on exclusion, communities all over the world have built solidarity economies, which provides us with a multitude of ways to interact with the economy. With these ways, we can reclaim power over our economic experiences. 

About

Dr. Bergeron is a professor of Gender and Economic Development, who taught for over 25 years at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Since graduating with a PhD in Economics from the University of Notre Dame, she has written countless books and journal articles including “Formal, Informal and Care Economies” for Oxford University Press, among many others. From her long list of honors and awards, Dr. Bergeron has received the Women’s Studies Research Award from the University of Michigan-Dearborn both in 2000 and in 2005, as well as the Distinguished Service Award in 2013. She has developed several new courses as she innovates and highlights the role of feminist economics in transforming the way we view the economy. It is with this expertise and tact that she, as a feminist political economist, sits on the DISE Collective’s Advisory Council.

For the 99% with Dr. Suzanne Bergeron

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Letting African Women Define Ubuntu In The Market

Your host Serena Bahadur, and guest professor, Dr. Kinyanjui, discuss the African philosophy of Ubuntu and how it motivates the African and Western market contexts in different ways. As they navigate who defines Ubuntu and how, they highlight they importance of African women in defining Ubuntu and of black women being recognized for their contributions to society. This episode will leave you feeling inspired to stand, "shoulder by shoulder", towards a future based on our humanity.

Dr. Njeri Kinyanjui

Dr. Njeri Kinyanjui is a Kenyan author, scholar and volunteer community organizer. Her personal and professional experience with the intersections of feminism, urbanization and economic informality have led her to relentlessly advocate for our humanity in a system of consumerism and exploitation. Dr. Kinyanjui holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge. She has been a visiting scholar at the International Development Centre at the UK’s Open University and at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. She has articles published for the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, the African Studies Review, and many more. Her poetically written articles and books detail the beauty, drive and value of African women, African markets and African philosophies. 

Letting African Women Define Ubuntu In The Market with Dr. Kinyanjui

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Queering The Social Solidarity Economy

The world we want is so different from the world we live in. What if we shifted our attention to a type of economy that works for all of us instead of one we all work for? The answer may lay in a social solidarity economy, which highlights instead of condemns the hard work of the LGBTQI+ and BIPOC community. Your host, Serena Bahadur, and guest professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Dr. Sara Shroff, discuss what this could mean for youth, and the role we all have in making our ideal world come alive.

About

Dr. Shroff is a queer feminist with Indian, Pakistani, and Kenyan roots. As an interdisciplinary and transnational scholar, her studies have taken her all over the world. Her personal and professional life have accumulated beautifully toward her dynamic perspective, which aims to deconstruct our everyday economic structures to fit our identities, instead of the other way around. Dr. Shroff holds a PhD from the New School in New York. She was also the first recipient of the Martha LA McCain postdoctoral fellowship from Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Her wide scholarship stretches across collateral genealogies of race, coloniality, cultural memory, affect, aesthetics and sexuality in contemporary South Asia and its diasporas. Her intimate focus on the many intersectionalities of gender and their representations invite your warm self-reflection as much as they insist on firm advocacy. 

Queering The Social Solidarity Economy with Dr. Sara Shroff

Diverse Economies for Youth - Hosted by Serena Bahadur

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Racial Capitalism & What Youth Can Do About It

The economy we all know may use capitalism to demand our dollars, but there is still a way we can demand them back. As homeownership seems to slip further and further out of the reach of this generation, we need a new solution to make and keep more money. This solution may not be very new at all - enter community money-managing systems. Stemming from African philosophy, a like-minded community saving and distributing money together may bring us closer to our milestones than we ever thought we could get. Your host Serena Bahadur and Critical Race professor Dr. Ebun Joseph discuss how taking part in this idea could help you jump over the racialized barriers of money access and straight into success.

About

Dr. Joseph is a Nigerian-Irish lecturer, author and consultant. As a Black feminist, her activism focuses on equity instead of equality. Based in Ireland, she is the founder and coordinator of the very first Black Studies module in the country at University College Dublin. Dr. Joseph is also a Race Relations Consultant, the Director Institute of Antiracism and Black Studies, and a Chairperson for the African Scholars Associations Ireland. Notably, she has recently published her 2020 book “Racial Stratification in Ireland: A Critical Race Theory of Labour Market Inequality” with the Manchester University Press. With a pressing focus on racial capitalism as the context for her work, Dr. Ebun Joseph highlights alternatives to the systems and viewpoints that dominate our societies.

Racial Capitalism & What Youth Can Do About it with Dr. Ebun Joseph

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