From the Holocaust to Development: reflections of surviving development pioneers

Abstract

This paper reports on one element of a research project on Holocaust survivors who subsequently became prominent in the emerging field of development studies. Part of the extended interviews with survivors involved retrospective reflections on the evolution and current state of their branch of development studies. This material, augmented by an interrogation of their published work, provides fascinating ‘insider’ perspectives on the kaleidoscope of changing ideologies, theories, discourses, policies and practices subsumed under the label of ‘development’. While the particular nature of this set of interviewees calls for caution in generalising from the findings, they appear far less unrepresentative than might be imagined, both because the subjects are diverse in terms of nationality, age, socialisation, wartime experiences and subsequent career tracks, and because they forged prominent contributions to, and were shaped by, the evolving Zeitgeist of development during an era when its imperative was virtually unquestioned. The paper incorporates interviewees' own voices, interpreting their perspectives in terms of their personal characteristics and positionalities and in relation to contemporaneous development debates. It thus contributes both to the history/archaeology of development and to ongoing critical debates about its nature.

Notes

This project would not have been possible without the financial support of the British Academy (Grant SG-43920), the research assistance of Jenny Lunn and, most of all, the willing participation of an extraordinary group of people who agreed (sometimes in an unaccustomed reversal of roles) to become interviewees and share sometimes complex and intimate aspects of their lives and recollections. I found the experience most absorbing and enriching. Hopefully this and the other outputs from the project will repay my debt in some small way. My interviewees have verified the extracts used, while John Friedmann, Michael Cernea and Shlomo Reutlinger have edited their original transcripts for clarity and coherence. My thanks also to Gerry Helleiner and John Shaw, Hans Singer's biographer, for helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the rhul interdepartmental workshop on ‘New Directions in Development Theory and Practice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ on 29 May 2008.

I dedicate this paper to the memory of Ruth Fredman Cernea, beloved wife of Michael, who passed away on 31 March 2009, as this issue went to press, and who took a keen interest in the project and became a good friend.

1Interview from Montreal, 29 April 2008.

2 H Bondi, Science, Churchill and Me: The Autobiography of Hermann Bondi, Master of Churchill College Cambridge, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1990.

3 HW Arndt, A Course Through Life: Memoirs of an Australian Economist, History of Development Studies 1, Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University, 1995, p 1. See also HW Arndt, ‘Economist down under’, in H Hagemann (ed), Zur deutschsprachigen Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Emigration nach 1933, Marburg: Metropolis-Verlag, 1997, p 154.

4 Arndt, ‘Economist down under’.

5 P Coleman, S Cornish & P Drake, Arndt's Story: The Life of an Australian Economist, Canberra: anu e Press and Asia Pacific Press, 2007.

6 G Rist, History of Development: From European Origins to Global Faith, London: Zed, 1997.

7 MP Cowen & RW Shenton, Doctrines of Development, London: Routledge, 1996.

8 DJ Shaw, Sir Hans Singer: The Life and Work of a Development Economist, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p 277.

9 See, for example, W Sachs, Zur Archäologie der Entwicklungsidee, Frankfurt: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1992; F Schuurman (ed), Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, London: Zed, 1993; A Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995; P Streeten, Thinking about Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; MP Cowen & RW Shenton, Doctrines of Development, 1996; C Leys, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, London: James Currey, 1996; Rist, History of Development; R Kößler, Entwicklung, Münster: Westphalisches Dampfboot, 1998; and U Kothari (ed), A Radical History of Development Studies, London: Zed Books and Cape Town: David Philip, 2005.

10 GM Meier & D Seers (eds), Pioneers in Development, New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1984, book jacket.

11 TG Weiss, T Carayannis, L Emmerij & R Jolly (eds), UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice, Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2005.

12 H Newbold (ed), Life Stories: World-renowned Scientists Reflect on their Lives and the Future of Life on Earth, Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 2000.

13 GM Meier, Biography of a Subject: An Evolution of Development Economics, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

14 Ibid, p 7.

15 Ibid, p vii.

16 Rosenstein-Rodan's essay in Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development contains much interesting reflection on his entry into development, his seminal 1943 paper on problems of industrialisation in southern and southeastern Europe that some people cite as the dawn of development economics, and his subsequent publications, including the ‘big push’.

17 DJ Shaw, Sir Hans Singer: The Life and Work of a Development Economist, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp 267–269; and J Toye, ‘Obituary: Hans Singer and international development’, Journal of International Development, 18 (6), 2006, pp 915–923.

18 Shaw, Sir Hans Singer, pp 265–267, 270–276.

19 H Singer, ‘The influence of Schumpeter and Keynes on the development of a development economist’, in Hagemann, Zur deutschsprachigen Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Emigration nach 1933, pp 127–150. It should be noted that the original version of this essay appeared in the first edition of the Dictionary in 1992, thus predating Singer's 1997 article. It was only very marginally updated for the second edition. The same applies to Paul Streeten's entries in these publications and the Biographical Note in Streeten, Thinking about Development.

20 H Singer, ‘Hans Wolfgang Singer’, in P Arestis & M Sawyer (eds), Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000, pp 606–612.

21 Singer, ‘The influence of Schumpeter and Keynes on the development of a development economist’, pp 128–129. See also Shaw, Sir Hans Singer, p 277.

22 HW Singer, ‘The terms of trade controversy and the evolution of soft financing: early years at the UN’, in Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development, pp 275–303 (with a biographical summary pp 273–274).

23 Singer, ‘The influence of Schumpeter and Keynes on the development of a development economist’, p148.

24 R Jolly, ‘Hans Singer: the gentle giant’, memorial lecture, International Institute for Labour Studies, Geneva, 2006.

25 United Nations Intellectual History Project (unihp), The Complete Oral History Transcripts from UN Voices, New York: unihp (cd), 2007, Singer, p 6.

26 Ibid, pp 159–160.

27 Ibid, p 155.

28 Ibid, pp 153–154.

29 H Singer, ‘Is development economics still relevant?’, in L Emmerij (ed), Economic and Social Development in the 21st Century, Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

30 Shaw, Sir Hans Singer, pp 177–178.

31 Ibid, pp 279–280.

32 Ibid, pp 208–210.

33 Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development.

34 Institute of Economic Affairs (iea) (ed), A Tribute to Peter Bauer, London: iea, 2002.

35 See BS Yamey, ‘Peter Bauer: economist and scholar’, Cato Journal, 7 (1), 1987, pp 21–27; iea, A Tribute to Peter Bauer; R Sally (ed), ‘Essays in the spirit of Peter Bauer’, Economic Affairs, special issue, 23 (4), 2003; ‘Remembering Peter Bauer’, Cato Journal, special issue, 25 (3), 2005; and most obituaries and longer tributes since his death.

36 M Lipton, ‘Comment’, in Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development, pp 44–50; and TN Srinivasan, ‘Comment’, in Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development, pp 51–55.

37 A Roth, ‘Obituary—Lord Bauer: Thatcher's rightwing economist opposed to third world aid’, Guardian, 6 May 2002.

38 PT Bauer, ‘Remembrance of studies past: retracing first steps’, in Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development, p 34 (with a biographical summary pp 25–26). Republished as Chapter 1, pp 1–18, Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development.

39 PT Bauer, Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984, esp chs 1 and 10.

40 J Buchanan, ‘The sayer of truth: a personal tribute to Peter Bauer’, Public Choice, 112, 2002, pp 233–234.

41 PT Bauer, The Rubber Industry, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984; Bauer, West African Trade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954; and J Blundell, ‘A conversation with Peter Bauer’, in iea, A Tribute to Peter Bauer, pp 37–39.

42 Bauer, ‘Remembrance of studies past’, p 42.

43 Lipton, ‘Comment’.

44 Srinivasan, ‘Comment’.

45 Blundell, ‘A conversation with Peter Bauer’, p 31.

46 Ibid, pp 26–27, 46–47.

47 R Harris, ‘Powerful economic analyst with controversial views—Obituary Peter Bauer’, Financial Times, 6 May 2002.

48 AO Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958.

49 AO Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.

50 AO Hirschman, Crossing Boundaries: Selected Writings, New York: Zone Books, 1998.

51 AO Hirschman, ‘A dissenter's confession: “the Strategy of … Economic Development” revisited’, in Meier & Seers, Pioneers in Development, pp 87–111 (with a biographical summary pp 85–86).

52 AO Hirschman, A Propensity to Self-Subversion, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995; and Hirschman, Crossing Boundaries.

53 Hirschman, Crossing Boundaries, pp 88–89.

54 AO Hirschman, Development Projects Observed, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1967.

55 Most accessibly as P Streeten, ‘Aerial roots’, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, 157, June 1986, pp 135–159; and most extensively as ‘P Streeten, an autobiographical sketch’, in Hagemann, Zur deutschsprachigen Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Emigration nach 1933, pp 177–205. A rather different version is Streeten, ‘Paul Streeten’, in Arestis & Sawyer, Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, pp 636–642; while the ‘Biographical note’ in P Streeten, Thinking about Development, constitutes an amalgam of the last two.

56 Streeten, ‘Biographical note’, p 352.

57 P Streeten, The Frontiers of Development Studies, London: Macmillan, 1972.

58 Streeten, Thinking about Development.

59 Streeten, ‘An autobiographical sketch’, p 204.

60 Interview, Spencertown, NY, 7 November 2006.

61 Streeten, Thinking about Development, pp 352–353.

62 Streeten, ‘An autobiographical sketch’, p 204.

63 Streeten, ‘Paul Streeten’, pp 641–642.

64 I Adelman & CT Morris, Society, Politics and Economic Development: A Quantitative Approach, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967; I Adelman & CT Morris, Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing Countries, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973; and CT Morris & I Adelman, Comparative Patterns of Economic Development, 1850–1914, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

65 M Blaug (ed), Great Economists since Keynes, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 1998.

66 I Adelman, ‘Confessions of an incurable romantic’, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, 166, 1988, pp 243–162, reprinted in I Adelman, Institutions and Development Strategies: The Selected Essays of Irma Adelman, Vol 1, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1995.

67 S Grossbard-Shechtman, ‘Explorations: Irma Adelman—a pioneer in the expansion of economics’, Feminist Economics, 8 (1), 2002, pp 101–116.

68 I Adelman, ‘On the state of development economics’, Journal of Development Economics, 1 (1), 1974, pp 3–5; Adelman, ‘Development economics: a reassessment of goals’, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 65 (2), 1975, pp 302–309.

69 Z Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity, 1989; and Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, Cambridge: Polity, 1991.

70 J Friedmann, The Prospect of Cities, Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press, 2002.

71 Ibid, pp 119–121.

72 Someone wanting to improve the world.

73 Friedmann, The Prospect of Cities, pp 151–153. Emphasis in original.

74 J Friedmann, Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development, Oxford, Blackwell, 1992.

75 I Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein, New York: New Press, 2000.

76 M Cernea, Social Organization and Development Anthropology: The 1995 Malinowski Award Lecture, Washington, DC: World Bank esd Studies and Monographs Series 6, 1995.

77 M Cernea, Putting People First: Sociological Variables in Rural Development, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

78 Personal communication, 19 January 2009.

79 W Stolper, ‘Facts without planning’, in Hagemann, Zur deutschsprachigen Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Emigration nach 1933, pp 95–125.