Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:50:34.893Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing the History of Development: A Review of the Recent Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2011

MARC FREY  and
SÖNKE KUNKEL
MARC FREY
Affiliation:
Jacobs University Bremen, School of Humanities & Social Sciences – SHSS History, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany; [email protected]; [email protected].
SÖNKE KUNKEL
Affiliation:
Jacobs University Bremen, School of Humanities & Social Sciences – SHSS History, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany; [email protected]; [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘Development’ as a ‘process of enlarging people's choices’ is omnipresent. Constituents of global society – governments, international organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), multinational corporations, the media and individual actors – are deeply involved in its practices and discourses. At universities around the world, development studies mushroom, and development research has become a darling of the social sciences. In particular, development assistance has become big business, involving the flow of $136 billion dollars in 2009. But more significantly than before, development issues and especially development assistance have become contested terrain, too. While the millennium development goals defined by the United Nations in 2000 and designed to halve global poverty by the year 2015 call on donor and recipient countries to increase their efforts, critics of development assistance are multiplying.

Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 215 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This broad definition of ‘development’ is taken from the first Human Development Report of the UNDP in 1990. See http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_1990_en_overview.pdf, p. 1.

2 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Query Wizard for International Development Statistics, http://stats.oecd.org/qwids. Official Development Aid, Disbursements.

3 See United Nations Millennium Goals, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ (accessed February 2011).

4 Sachs, Jeffrey D., The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York, London: Penguin Books, 2005)Google Scholar.

5 Rosenstein-Rodan, P. N., ‘Problems of Industrialization of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe’, The Economic Journal, 53 (1943), 202–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenstein-Rodan, P. N., ‘The International Development of Economically Backward Areas’, International Affairs, 20, 2 (1944), 157–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Easterly, William, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done so Much Ill and so Little Good (New York and London: Penguin Books, 2006)Google Scholar. For further examples, see Moyo, Dambisa, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa (New York and London: Penguin Books, 2009)Google Scholar. A more detailed and profound critique is provided by Calderisi, Robert, The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Collier, Paul, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can be Done About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

7 Easterly, The White Man's Burden, 272, 278, 281, 285.

8 Cullather, Nick, ‘Development? It's History. Research Note’, Diplomatic History, 24, 4 (2000), 641–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid., 653.

10 A recent example (though more differentiated than stated here) would be Ekbladh, David, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, and Rist, Gilbert, The History of Development, new ed., rev. and expanded (New York: Zed Books, 2002)Google Scholar.

11 See also Edelman, Marc and Haugerud, Angelique, eds., Anthropology of Development and Globalization. From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)Google Scholar. This anthology, though exploring development, is more concerned with globalisation and capitalism.

12 See, for example, Bayart, Jean-François, L'Etat en Afrique. La politique du ventre, 2nd ed. (Paris: Fayard, 2006)Google Scholar; an English translation of an earlier edition appeared as The State in Africa. The Politics of the Belly (London: Longman, 1993). Also see Latouche, Serge, Survivre au développement. De la décolonisation de l'imaginaire économique à la construction d'une société alternative (Paris: Editions Mille et une Nuits, 2004)Google Scholar; List, Friedrich, Das nationale System der politische Oekonomie (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta'scher, 1842)Google Scholar. There are many English editions and several translations of List's book under the title of The National System of Political Economy. On the significance of List in contemporary Chinese popular history and modernisation discourses, see Spakowski, Nicola, ‘National Aspirations on a Global Stage: Concepts of World/Global History in Contemporary China’, Journal of Global History, 4, 3 (2009), 475–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in particular 486ff.

13 Sieberg, Herward, Colonial Development. Die Grundlegung moderner Entwicklungspolitik durch Großbritannien 1919–1949 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1985), 527–76Google Scholar; Morgan, D. J., The Official History of Colonial Development, vol. 1: The Origins of British Aid Policy, 1924–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1979), chapters 10 and 15Google Scholar. See also the extensive documentation in S. R. Ashton and S. E. Stockwell, eds., British Documents on the End of Empire, series A, vol. 1: Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice 1925–1945, part 2: Economic Policy, Social Policies and Colonial Research (London: HMSO for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in the University of London, 1996); de Jong, J. J. P., ‘Colonial Welfare Policies and the Origins of Dutch Developing Cooperation’, in Schweigman, C. and Bosma, U. T., eds., Research and Development Cooperation. The Role of the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1990), 50–62Google Scholar; Marseille, J., Empire Colonial et capitalisme français: Histoire d'un divorce (Paris, Michel: 1984)Google Scholar.

14 Quoted in Cowen, Michael and Shenton, Robert, ‘The Origins and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa’, Journal of Sociology, 4, 2 (1991), 145Google Scholar.

15 See, for example, the classic Multatuli (pen name for Douwes Dekkert), Max Havelaar of the koffieveilingen der Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (1907), 10th ed. (Amsterdam: Maatschappij voor Goede en Goedkope Lectuur, 1917).

16 Cooper, Frederick, Africa Since 1940. The Past of the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 One of the unfortunate consequences of writing agricultural development history as interdisciplinary colonial history is that both books were rarely reviewed, and then only in more minor or specialised journals.

18 Cooper, Frederick, ‘Writing the History of Development’, in Unger, Corinna R., Malinowski, Stephan and Eckert, Andreas, eds., Modernizing Missions: Approaches to ‘Developing’ the Non-Western World after 1945 special issue, Journal of Modern European History, 8, 1 (2010), 5–23, here 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Dimier, Veronique, ‘Bringing the Neo-Patrimonial State Back to Europe: French Decolonization and the Making of the European Development Aid Policy’, in Kruke, Anja, ed., Dekolonisation. Prozesse und Verflechtungen 1945–1990 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 2009), 433–58Google Scholar; Frey, Marc, ‘Dutch Elites and the End of Empire in Indonesia’, in Dülffer, Jost and Frey, Marc, eds., Elites and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)Google Scholar; Hodge, Joseph M., ‘British Colonial Expertise, Post-Colonial Careering and the Early History of International Development’, Journal of Modern European History, 8, 1 (2010), 24–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 For instance, the noted historian of Dutch development policies, Marc Dierikx, simply refers to ‘colonial traditions’ in explaining the Dutch response to Point IV and the introduction of the United Nations technical assistance programme. See Dierikx, Marc, ‘Developing Policy on Development. The Hague, 1945–1977’, in Pharo, Helge Ø. and Fraser, Monika Pohle, eds., The Aid Rush. Aid Regimes in Northern Europe During the Cold War, vol. 1 (Oslo: Oslo Academic Press, 2008), 223–52Google Scholar.

21 Vahsen's work also points to the changing role of international organisations, a more recent field of development history. See, for example, on the World Bank, Alacevich, Michele, The Political Economy of the World Bank. The Early Years (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Staples, Amy S., The Birth of Development. How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945–1965 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. On the United Nations, see the volumes published within the United Nations Intellectual History Project, most recently, for example, Stokke, Olav, The UN and Development. From Aid to Cooperation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Tagi Sagafi-Nejad with Dunning, John H., The UN and Transnational Corporations. From Code of Conduct to Global Compact (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

22 See Rempe, Martin, ‘Crashkurs zum europäischen Entwicklungsexperten? Das Praktikantenprogramm der EWG-Kommission für afrikanische Beamte in den 1960er Jahren’, in Bluche, Lorraine, Lipphardt, Veronika and Patel, Kiran Klaus, eds., Der Europäer – ein Konstrukt. Wissensbestände, Diskurse, Praktiken (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2009), 207–28Google Scholar.

23 Dimier, ‘Bringing the Neo-Patrimonial State Back to Europe’, 433.

24 Ibid., 449.

25 Quoted by Rempe, ‘Crashkurs’, 226.

26 See, in particular, Iriye, Akira, Global Community. The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 126–56Google Scholar. See also Tilly, Charles, Social Movements, 1768–2004 (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2004)Google Scholar.

27 Richard T. Griffiths, ‘Development Aid. Some Reference Points for Historical Research’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 1, 17–52.

28 See the contributions by Helge Pharo, Heide-Irene Schmidt, Jan Pedersen, Marc Dierikx and Peter Brunbech in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 1.

29 Jarle Simensen, ‘Aid Symbioses and its Pitfalls. The Nordic/Norwegian-Tanzanian Aid Relationship, 1962–1986’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 2, 153–78; Hilde Selbervik, ‘The Norwegian-Tanzanian Aid Relationship in the 1990s: Still Trapped in a Samaritan's Dilemma?’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 2, 179–216.

30 Helge Pharo analyses the evolution of the aid regime over time. Though he looks at the Norwegian experience, his overall assessment can be generalised. See Helge Pharo, ‘Reluctance, Enthusiasm and Indulgence: The Expansion of Bilateral Norwegian Aid’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 1, 53–90.

31 Thorsten B. Olesen, ‘Between Words and Deeds. Denmark and the NIEO Agenda, 1974–1982’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 1, 145–82, and Hanne Hagtvedt Vik, ‘Small, Not Weak? Nordic Strategies to Influence the World Bank in the 1980s’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, 333–63.

32 Smith, Tony, ‘New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War’, Diplomatic History, 24, 4 (2000), 567–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Sunniva Engh, ‘From Northern Feminists to Southern Women: Scandinavian Population Aid to India’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 1, 253–84. See also Frey, Marc, ‘Experten, Stiftungen und Politik: Zur Genese des globalen Diskurses über Bevölkerung seit 1945’, Zeithistorische Studien/Studies in Contemporary History, 4, 2 (2007), 137–59Google Scholar; Frey, Marc, ‘Neo-Malthusianism and Development: Shifting Interpretations of a Contested Paradigm’, in Journal of Global History, 6, 1 2011, 75–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Connelly, Matthew, Fatal Misconception. The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Robinson, Warren C. and Ross, John A., eds., The Global Family Planning Revolution. Three Decades of Population Policies and Programs (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 For a historically informed present-day analysis, see Riddell, Roger C., Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

35 Rempe, Martin, ‘Fit für den Weltmarkt in Fünf Jahren? Die Modernisierung der senegalesischen Erdnusswirtschaft in den 1960er Jahren’, in Büschel, Hubertus and Speich, Daniel, eds., Entwicklungswelten. Globalgeschichte der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (Frankfurt: Campus, 2009), 241–74Google Scholar.

36 Unger, Corinna, ‘Rourkela, ein Stahlwerk im Dschungel. Industrialisierung, Modernisierung und Entwicklungshilfe im Kontext von Dekolonisation und Kaltem Krieg 1950–1970’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 48 (2008), 367–88Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., 387. Tirthankar Roy argues that foreign aid actually impeded Indian national development. See T. Roy, ‘End of Aid. External Assistance and Development Strategy in India’, in Pharo and Pohle Fraser, The Aid Rush, vol. 2, 95–114.

38 Malinowski, Stephan, ‘Modernisierungskriege. Militärische Gewalt und koloniale Modernisierung im Algerienkrieg (1954–1962)’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 48 (2008), 213–48Google Scholar.

39 Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

40 Hubertus Büschel, ‘Eine Brücke am Mount Meru. Zur Globalgeschichte von Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe und Gewalt in Tanganjika’, in Büschel and Speich, Entwicklungswelten, 175–206.

41 See, for example, Frey, Marc, ed., Asian Experiences of Development in the 20th Century (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2010)Google Scholar (special issue of Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 19, 4 (2009)); Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, Shmuel, Die Vielfalt der Moderne (Weilerswist: Velbrück, 2000)Google Scholar.

42 See Latham, Michael, Modernization as Ideology. American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000)Google Scholar. See also recently the H-Diplo Roundtable Review 11.35 (20 July 2010) on Ekbladh's Great American Mission.

43 Engerman, David C. and Unger, Corinna, eds., ‘Special Forum: Modernization as a Global Project’, Diplomatic History, 33, 3 (2009), 375–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.