Economic Miracles and their Afterlives

To witness the world through the many unfolding “economic miracles” is to behold dreamworlds and catastrophes all at once. Initially tied to the post-war phenomenon of wirtschaftswunder – the dramatic pace of economic recovery in West Germany – the seductive idea of “economic miracle” captured the imagination of policymakers across the world. This workshop traces the work the ideas of ‘miracle’ perform in the domain of economy, and the kind of utopias/dystopias they conjure in times of peace and war. Based on a recent issue of Radical History Journal devoted to this theme, the workshop brings together contributors to reflect on the historical dialectic between ruins and reconstruction, decline and emergence which remains at the heart of this phenomenon. Convened by

• Ravinder Kaur, Professor of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen
• Barbara Weinstein, Professor of History, NYU