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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; m.frey@jacobs-university.de; s.kunkel@jacobs-university.de.
SÖNKE KUNKEL
Affiliation:
Jacobs University Bremen, School of Humanities & Social Sciences – SHSS History, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany; m.frey@jacobs-university.de; s.kunkel@jacobs-university.de.
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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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24 Ibid., 449.

25 Quoted by Rempe, ‘Crashkurs’, 226.

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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.

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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.

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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.