John Stuart Mill’s Imperialism, Protestant Work Ethic, & Global South

We are extremely lucky to have Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Anderson, Max Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, as well as, John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She will be discussing her some of the core ideas of her upcoming book on the history of the Protestant work ethic through the history of economics, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

We welcome you to our special session co-organised by South Asia WG, and Philosophy of Economics WG! We are delighted to have Diana Soeiro, as the co-organiser of this session within our larger project!

John Stuart Mill's Imperialism, the Protestant Work Ethic, and Its Implications for the 21st Century Global South

Abstract

John Stuart Mill was a pivotal thinker in the liberal tradition and a champion of workers in his economic writings. He was also an imperialist who dedicated his entire professional life to serving the East India Company. I argue that these positions are irreconcilable, and trace Mill's contradictions to tensions inherent in the Protestant work ethic. 21st-century neoliberalism amounts to a revival of the reactionary version of the work ethic that underwrote Mill's imperialism. But there was also a progressive version of the work ethic, which can be updated to address the challenges that workers in the global South face in today's neoliberal globalized economy.

Biography

Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Anderson, Max Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, as well as, John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She earned her B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1981 and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1987. She joined the Philosophy Department at University of Michigan in 1987. Professor Anderson designed University of Michigan’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, and was its founding director for two years. She has won fellowships from the ACLS and Guggenheim Foundations, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics (Harvard UP, 1993), The Imperative of Integration (Princeton UP, 2010), Private Government (How Employers Rule our Lives, and Why We Don’t Talk About It) (Princeton UP, 2017) and numerous, widely reprinted articles in journals of philosophy, law, and economics. She specializes in moral and political philosophy, social and feminist epistemology, and the philosophy of the social sciences.

Prof. Anderson is completing a book on the history of the Protestant work ethic in philosophy, economics, and public policy, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Format

Prof. Anderson will be speaking for the first 45 minutes. We will then be holding a Q&A Session.

This session is part of the larger project:

Dissecting Capitalism: Its past, present and future

This series aims to explore the tenets of capitalism over the fabric of time and examine its influence on the global economy and social classes.