How is the world organised economically?

This chapter examines how the world is organised economically. Rather than assuming that the current economic structure is somehow pre-ordained, the chapter traces how the global economy is continually structured by competing visions about what makes a good life and who is able to pursue it. Focusing on the role of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, this chapter tries to decipher the underlying logics to how lives and labours are valued differently and how such differentiation shapes what gets measured and who benefits as part of the economy. In doing so, this chapter attends to the classed, gendered and racialised logics that infuse the economic order, which work to deplete, dominate and dispossess certain groups so that others might benefit.