Development? It's History

Abstract

I tap the command s=economic development into the library catalog and the computer produces five thousand records, the maximum, under alphabetical subheadings that reach only partway through the letter E. The remainder of the titles – there must be at least another twenty thousand – cannot be retrieved by any commands I know. For social scientists in the 1950s, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, “no economic subject more quickly captured the attention of so many as the rescue of the people of the poor countries from their poverty.”1 They did their work well. Underwritten by governments and private foundations, scholars around the world tackled the problem of how to turn poor, backward countries into wealthy modern ones. They split into rival factions – classical, dependency, world systems – and turned out case studies, comparative studies, works on theory and application. Official reports from national and international aid agencies added to the pile, which continues to grow.2