A01=Michael Gubser
Africa
American
Asia
Author_Michael Gubser
Category=JP
Category=JPS
Category=KCL
Category=NHB
Development Theory
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
European
Foreign Aid
Global South
Latin America
Postwar
Western
Western industrialization
Western model of social and economic development
Product details
- ISBN 9780300275810
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 26 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A compelling examination of how economic development projects ignore local history, and the effects of this shortsightedness
Foreign aid planners rarely consider the history of the societies in which they work, an oversight noted in the development literature but rarely examined. Aid programs costing billions of dollars operate largely in a historical vacuum, divorced from the knowledge of what succeeded or failed in the past. Michael Gubser chronicles the varieties of ahistoricism in international development theory and practice since 1945. He traces the history of development ideas, analyzing key theoretical and policy statements to highlight the marginalization of history in favor of technical solutions to economic and social problems; and he examines aid programs in several developing countries to show how Western models of social and economic development have been applied and misapplied.
Foreign aid planners rarely consider the history of the societies in which they work, an oversight noted in the development literature but rarely examined. Aid programs costing billions of dollars operate largely in a historical vacuum, divorced from the knowledge of what succeeded or failed in the past. Michael Gubser chronicles the varieties of ahistoricism in international development theory and practice since 1945. He traces the history of development ideas, analyzing key theoretical and policy statements to highlight the marginalization of history in favor of technical solutions to economic and social problems; and he examines aid programs in several developing countries to show how Western models of social and economic development have been applied and misapplied.
Michael Gubser is professor of history at James Madison University. He has published three books on European intellectual history and international development.
