I’m not a development
economist – although my mother (then heading for her 100th birthday)
had difficulty understanding exactly what sort of craft I was plying in exotic
places such as Tashkent, Baku and Bishkek. That reflects better on her time and
values than ours – which have invented such crazy and questionable occupations……it
was Robert Reich, I think, who talked about “symbolic analysts”……..
So what draws me to books
with titles like The World’s Banker (2005); Ideas for Development (2005); “Aid on the Edge of Chaos” (2013);
The Limits of Institutional Reform in
Development (2014) and Easterly’s
“Tyranny of Experts”??
One reason may be that such
books are remarkably like detective novels – there is a mystery (why do
countries fail/not grow?); a plot; victims, suspects; goodies and baddies.
What, however, they generally lack are character studies and, often, even a
feel for place
I may not be a development economist but, as several posts this past year have emphasised, I have been in the development business all my life. Except that (a) the approach I have been drawn to has been political and institutional rather than economic; and (b) the focus has more often been local than national.
I may not be a development economist but, as several posts this past year have emphasised, I have been in the development business all my life. Except that (a) the approach I have been drawn to has been political and institutional rather than economic; and (b) the focus has more often been local than national.
But I feel strongly that
there is an underlying commonality to “development endeavours” which virtually
all writers on the subject (tragically) miss – since almost everyone is
corralled inside the barbed-wire fences which mark off the territories of
intellectual disciplines and sub-disciplines (such as rural development, urban
development, institutional development, economic development……)
I remember first being aware
of this in the late 70s – working then as I was in the field of community
development and urban politics - and seeing planners, social workers and educationalists
all trying to adopt a more inclusive approach to the newly-discovered problems of the marginalised urban poor but using slightly different terms….."community planning"; "community work"; "community education"
I had a curious position then on
the edge of a variety of well-patrolled borders – Secretary of the majority
party’s Cabinet on Europe’s largest local authority (SRC) but also a Lecturer
at a nearby Polytechnic which was developing a new Degree structure. I had been
appointed an economist but was more of a policy planner with an obvious
interest in the political and organisational side of public administration – a
subject rapidly going out of fashion. After 4 years of freedom heading up a Local Government Centre, I was needed for academic work; forced to choose; opted for the
Politics department; despaired of the narrowness of the curriculum I was
expected to teach and hankered after the wider, inter-disciplinary focus I had
been accustomed to……
Yesterday we visited the superb Campulung-Muscel yet again - Romania's first capital with an amazing location and replete with old houses, some of which we visited.... the photograph is one of the externally-painted murals on an unknown church in what seemed the town's nicest area........
Little wonder, therefore, that I was soon pushed out. It’s not easy
to reinvent oneself at age 45 but I was lucky in having what was then the
modest income of a full-time Regional politician and experience which proved
thoroughly marketable as a consultant when the Wall fell down in 1989. I have
always been my own man – able to follow my passion – and am now so grateful
that I was rescued from a miserable academic existence and able to continue to
prowl forbidden borders…..
