Dividing what is particular from what is universal: The Human Development Index in a systems theoretical perspective

Abstract

All major international development organizations have committed themselves to a pluralistic approach that allows for a diversity of context-specific development paths. In order to be more than a superficial fad, these commitments must be effectively translated into the infrastructure of transnational knowledge stocks. More specifically, only if influential global development indicators are de-Westernized will non-Western contributions to human well-being be statistically accessible. Building on this proposition, the paper analyzes the Human Development Index (HDI) through the lens of Luhmann’s account of modernity, exploring whether the index avoids a Western bias or not. While the background understandings of the HDI offer an innovative approach in this regard, in only one of three indicators that compose the HDI is this approach translated into corresponding numerical measures. Three factors contribute to this mixed result, which could be of more general relevance for understanding how transnational knowledge stocks evolve.

Keywords:

• Development theory
• Human Development Index
• Knowledge
• Luhmann
• professionalization
• sociology of quantification

Acknowledgments

A very early version of this paper was presented at a conference on quantification at Bielefeld University, November 2013, organized by Joana Pfaff-Czarnecka and Sally Engle Merry, whom I thank for inspiration. My colleagues at RWTH Aachen University, Paul Hill, and Volker Schmidt contributed valuable comments on the early version. I thank two anonymous reviewers and the guest editors for their very helpful comments. I am also indebted to Bettina Heintz and André Kieserling.

Notes

1. For an anthropological genealogy of the HDI see Davis, Kingsbury, and Merry (2012). Fukuda-Parr and Khumar (2003) and Streeten (1995) discuss the HDI from the perspective of economists and philosophers, many of whom were involved in the creation of the HDI.

2. National citizenship is an exception in that it is ascriptive. What is important here, however, is that state services are provided by professionals.

3. The precise statistical purpose of national income, whether measured as GNP or GDP, is to quantify the productivity of a national economy (Lepenies, 2013). This fits well with the expansion logic of functional differentiation.

4. One exception must be noted: The 1990 HDI measures knowledge by literacy rates, independent of whether literacy is learnt in school or not.