AHA Session 42
Thursday, January 4, 2024: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Powell II (Parc 55, Third)
Chair:
Alden Young, University of California, Los Angeles
Session Abstract
Over the last decade, the history of international development has become an important and exciting subfield in twentieth century international and transnational, regional, and national histories. Evolving from an initial focus on US actors and institutions promoting American interests abroad in the context of the Cold War, subsequent histories of development have highlighted the long shadow of European imperialism, the emergence and ambitions of postcolonial national governments, and the advent of institutions of international governance in the interwar period to expand the field of debate beyond the Cold War and the US. Most of these histories, however, still focus on the experts, expertise, and the policy priorities of the Global North as they imported their knowledge and policies to the “developing” territories, areas, and states of the Global South and brought back the lessons of those projects to the Global North. Less present in this historiography are the people whose lives were impacted by such development and planning projects and who themselves changed and challenged these notions of planning and expertise through their resistance and negotiations with local and global experts. This panel brings together a set of scholars interested in constructing a history of development grounded not just geographically in the Global South but in its actors and institutions.
By combining histories of development from the peripheries in the Middle East, Latin America, and West Africa, this panel examines the patterns, contingencies and processes of development in the global south, their commonalities as well as instances of divergence. Because histories of development–especially those attentive to the implementation of development plans and policies– are necessarily site specific, presenting research from distinct regional cases such as rural Lebanon, Senegal, and Guatemala on one panel opens up multiple avenues for comparison and contrast that are difficult to access in isolation. The papers on this panel represent regions that had markedly different experiences of US and/or European imperial rule and paths to decolonization and national independence.
For example, how did processes of decolonization in the late 1950s and 60s impact shifts from industrial to agrarian strategies of development? Each region also occupied a distinct position within the global Cold War. What happened when former colonial subjects took over the reins of state planning agencies? How did indigenous actors participate in and shape development projects? What competing philosophies of development were at play across the Middle East, west Africa, and the Americas and which were more regionally specific?
