Bridging the Global Wealth Gap

Abstract

Joanne Meyerowitz begins her compelling account by asking how in the United States the lodestar of the development enterprise went from modernization, defined as the structural transformation of society, to preventing poverty. While at times the concept of development has appeared elusive enough that it might be capable of encompassing both modernization and antipoverty, Meyerowitz’s study does an excellent job of showing that the shift during the 1970s “from large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects aimed at national economic growth and towards small-scale antipoverty projects” entailed a total reimagination of the meaning of development (2). In order to tell the story of why the 1970s and 1980s are pivotal moments in the history of development, Meyerowitz builds on essential works of earlier generations of historians of development. The historiography on development might helpfully be thought of as consisting of three waves.1 The first wave, starting in the early years of this century, told the story of the rise and fall of modernization theory during the height of the Cold War. The second wave increasingly turned towards the application of development ideas in specific cases and projects. One of the core insights of the second wave of the historiography of development was the persistence and enduring nature of development practices across the colonial and postcolonial divide. The third wave of which A Global War on Poverty makes an excellent contribution is defined by overturning a number of the assumptions of the first two waves. The most important of which is the epistemic divide between the Global North and the Global South. For a long time, the history of development, often inadvertently replicated the division of labor within development studies itself, where ideas/theory came from the Global North, and they were applied in the Global South. This dichotomy has lately been challenged by authors like Priya Lal, Amy Offner, Christy Thornton, and Margarita Fajardo.2