by Kristóf Szombati
This year’s selection prioritizes breadth and balance. The five books span distinct thematic concerns—extractivism and the green transition, the decolonization of economic thought, the contemporary polycrisis, African economic sovereignty and industrialization, and housing financialization—ensuring that no single issue dominates. Disciplinary perspectives range from political science to economics, sociology, development studies, and comparative political economy, offering readers multiple methodological lenses on the current conjuncture. The list also strives for ideological diversity: alongside critical analyses of capitalism and extraction, it includes a constructive-developmentalist argument for resource-based industrialization in Africa and an institutionalist account of mortgage markets that resists easy left-right categorization. Geographically, the selection moves from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa and the North Atlantic, with authors based in Argentina, South Africa, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The result is a list designed to challenge readers to think across regions, disciplines, and political commitments.
Thea Riofrancos, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2025.
The green transition requires lithium—vast quantities of it—for the batteries that will power electric vehicles and store renewable energy. But where does lithium come from, and at what cost? Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College, follows the metal from the salt flats of Chile and Argentina to the mines of Nevada and the factories of China. Extraction reveals the brutal irony at the heart of green capitalism: decarbonization in the Global North depends on intensified resource extraction in the Global South, displacing Indigenous communities and degrading fragile ecosystems. Riofrancos does not reject the energy transition but insists we confront its material foundations honestly. The book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why the climate crisis cannot be solved by market mechanisms alone.
Devika Dutt, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar, and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2025.
Decolonization has reshaped debates in anthropology, history, and literary studies. Economics, by contrast, has largely resisted such critical engagement. This collaborative volume by four UK-based scholars—at King’s College London, University College London, and SOAS—mounts a systematic challenge to the discipline’s foundations. Their argument is not simply that economics neglects the Global South, but that its core assumptions about rationality, markets, and development are themselves Eurocentric, rendering the discipline ill-equipped to address structural racism, uneven development, and the climate crisis. Decolonizing Economics excavates marginalized intellectual traditions and asks whether the field can be reformed from within or must be rebuilt on different foundations. It is a provocative intervention that will unsettle economists and non-economists alike.
Maristella Svampa, Policrisis: Escenarios de un mundo en disputa. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2025. In Spanish.
The concept of polycrisis—the notion that we face not isolated emergencies but a cascading, mutually reinforcing set of ecological, economic, and political breakdowns—has gained wide currency in recent years. Yet much of the discussion remains anchored in the Global North. Maristella Svampa, a sociologist and senior researcher at CONICET in Argentina, offers a Latin American perspective on this planetary predicament. Policrisis examines the exhaustion of progressive governments in the region, the resurgence of authoritarian right-wing movements, and the persistent grip of extractivist development models. Svampa refuses easy optimism but does not abandon the search for counter-hegemonic alternatives. Her book is a rigorous and politically engaged intervention from one of Latin America’s most important public intellectuals.
Horman Chitonge, Reclaiming Economic Sovereignty in Africa: A Natural Resource-Based Industrialisation Perspective. London: Anthem Press, 2025.
Why does Africa, the world’s most resource-rich continent, remain the world’s poorest? Horman Chitonge, a professor at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, argues that the answer lies in economic sovereignty—or its absence. African countries achieved political independence six decades ago, but economic sovereignty remains an incomplete project. Locked into commodity exports, dependent on foreign capital and imported manufactures, most African states lack the productive capabilities to chart autonomous development paths. Reclaiming Economic Sovereignty in Africa proposes that the continent leverage its natural resource endowments not for raw material exports but for industrialization—building the manufacturing capacity to add value domestically and reduce vulnerability to global commodity price swings. Chitonge’s argument is constructive rather than merely critical: he asks not only what has gone wrong but what can be done. The result is a rigorous contribution to African political economy that will interest scholars and policymakers alike.
Gregory Fuller, The Political Economy of Housing Financialization. New York: Columbia University Press, 2025.
The 2008 financial crisis revealed how profoundly housing markets shape macroeconomic stability. Yet the political economy of mortgage finance remains poorly understood. Gregory Fuller, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen, provides a comparative analysis of housing systems across Europe and the United States. His central argument is that national housing regimes diverge sharply in how financialized they are—that is, how much they encourage households to treat homes as tradeable financial assets. These differences have profound consequences for economic volatility, wealth inequality, and ultimately political preferences, including the rise of populism. The Political Economy of Housing Financialization is an institutionalist account that avoids moralizing while showing why housing policy belongs at the center of any serious discussion of capitalism’s future.
