What doughnuts can teach us about critical thinking

Economist Education: Why is visual reframing important?

Kate Raworth: Reframing is an invitation to look at the world through different lenses. We often do this through words, by changing the language we use. The work of George Lakoff, a well-known cognitive scientist, has shown why shouldn’t talk about tax relief; we should talk about tax justice. This verbal reframing of an issue will change how people approach it. And I think at least as important as verbal reframing is visual reframing, which can powerfully reinforce new concepts.

Economist Education: How is the doughnut an example of visual reframing?

Kate Raworth: When we draw diagrams so that the economy is represented within the living world, that changes how we think. We see boundaries where before we saw the possibility of endless economic growth. If we think of humanity’s use of Earth’s resources radiating out from the centre of the doughnut, the hole in the middle is a place where people are left short of the essentials of life and don’t have the resources they need.

But at the same time, using Earth’s resources puts pressure on the life-supporting systems of this planet. We must not overshoot the outer limit of what’s sustainable. So the shape of progress is fundamentally transformed: society thrives when it is balanced between the inner edge of the doughnut, which shows the social foundation, and the outer edge, which shows the ecological limit.

Economist Education: How can businesses successfully apply the principles of reframing?

Kate Raworth: One important example is the emergence of companies that are redefining the purpose of business to bring about systemic change. Take a Dutch chocolate company, Tony’s Chocolonely, for example, whose mission is to make 100% “slave free” chocolate the industry norm. Likewise a Dutch mobile-phone company, Fairphone, aims to make the electronics industry fair for both people and planet.

In both cases these companies are using their core business strategies to drive sector-wide change, and this is made possible by designing their corporate governance, ownership and financing in ways that are aligned with such reframed goals.

Economist Education: How do we get better at reframing?

Kate Raworth: We need a diversity of views if we’re going to represent everything that’s relevant in the economy and beyond. We need feminist economists to make visible the unpaid caring work of the household. We need scholars from the global south to make visible realities that weren’t embedded in the founding frameworks of economics. We need to work in coalitions with people who can see things that we have no chance of getting close to. 

Every way of working should be reframed for our times. The economist John Maynard Keynes said economics is the science of thinking in terms of models, joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world. Well, I think it’s time for art, because there are a lot of models that we use, and we need to choose again which models actually serve us.