61 These themes are also the found in our recently (and posthumously) published book by Mittermaier The Hand behind the invisible Hand, which has been internationally favourably reviewed and well received. (Further manuscripts are in the pipeline for posthumous publication.) Adam Smith brought currency to the ‘invisible hand’ expression, which many take as the founding metaphor of modern equilibrium economic theory that assumes markets left to themselves will operate optimally and efficiently. To the contrary, the book explains that it is the exclusion of predatory activity that is at the centre of the idea of the market, viz. at the centre of Smith’s invisible hand metaphor. Where people specialize, the rule is to live by production and exchange and it is in the institutional set-up of an exchange economy that opportunities arise for some people, let us call them predators, to live and prosper at the expense of others. Predatory activities led, for instance, to the 2008 global financial crisis, and every reader can probably think of a myriad of examples illustrating predatory activities and their economic ‘counter productivity’. The Centre is strategically based at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, together cooperating in charting new directions in economic thought with particular relevance for the African continent, developing relevant economics syllabi, and hosting local and international fellows who research in the philosophy of economics and related areas. Large and important, therefore, is the agenda for the Karl Mittermaier Centre for the Philosophy of Economics. If the philosophy of economics is to be worth doing at all, it must be done in an attempt to gain new insights that will allow one to do better economics. Questions of philosophy and methodology are not meant to form only a separate sub-discipline in economics, that are of interest only to the specialists. Instead reflection on whether one’s assertions make sense – and that is what we at the Centre understand by the philosophy of science – ought to be carried out by all economists. Centre for Social Change and South African Research Chair in Social Change Overview For many people, ourselves included, the second year of the pandemic proved to be more trying than the first, especially as South Africa experienced a third wave of infections in the middle of the year. Despite these challenges, I am proud of what the Centre for Social Change and the South African Research Chair in Social Change (SARCHi) have been able to collectively achieve. Building on our work in 2020, the CSC and SARCHi have been at the forefront of contributing to the social science response to the pandemic. This work has been undertaken alongside other critical work on the quality of South Africa’s democracy, an issue even more critical as we begin to think through what a post-pandemic society may look like. The year’s achievements have been made possible through the growth in our research team with the appointment of five new early career researchers: Shaeera Kalla, Boitumelo Matlala, Kgothatso Mokgele, Paddington Mutkwe and Londiwe Sithole. This expansion has greatly advanced the Centre’s vision for being a home for up and coming academics to establish their research careers and to deliver on our mandate to study social change from below in the pursuit of building just and democratic societies. Driving the response of the social sciences to the pandemic UJ/HSRC Covid-19 Democracy Survey Since April 2020, the CSC in partnership with the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) division, has been conducting an ongoing crosssectional survey among adults living in South Africa to determine the social and economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, three rounds of the survey were fielded with the core focus on Covid-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy. The research demonstrated that vaccine acceptance increased form 67% in January 2021 to 72% in June 2021. This was welcome news; however, the findings also highlighted some social groups, predominately young people and White adults who were more vaccine-hesitant than average. The findings were able to detail that the reasons for vaccine hesitancy were primarily driven by concerns about side-effects and the effectiveness of the vaccines. Our findings demonstrated that conspiracy theory led explanations for vaccine hesitancy were only a minority of explanations given by the more than 20,000 people who participated in the survey. The research has garnered extensive media coverage, equating to R19 million in Advertising Value Equivalent. Furthermore, the findings have been presented to the National Department of
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