Il declino dell’economia dello sviluppo e i rapporti economia-antropologia. Note in margine a un saggio di Albert Hirschman

Abstract

The problem of understanding the mechanics of economic development has received much attention from economists since Smith's Wealth of nations. Development economics, however, is a fairly new area of inquiry; it started out in the 1940s as a subdiscipline of economics stimulated by the disrepute of orthodox economics after the Depression of the 1930s and the success of Keynes's attack on orthodox . The state of development economics has recently been much discussed. In The rise and decline of development economics, Albert Hirschman says that the emancipation from backwardness cannot be accomplished by economics alone. He attributes the failure of development economics to the fact that “underdeveloped” countries have been perceived as having interests only but no passions. If economics is to consider peoples' “habits and customs”, it will have to turn to other disciplines, such as anthropology.

What kind of relationship can there be between economics and anthropology? In the past, it has been one of dependency, anthropology depending on economics for theory. There have recently been critical developments in economics in reference to other social sciences. But little has been said about the problem of developing the “underdeveloped” countries, evidently the question must first be considered in cultural and political terms.