The use of global abstractions: National income accounting in the period of imperial decline

Journal of Global History

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 7-28

  Speich, Daniel ^a  

^a ETH ZURICH   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

development history; economic history; history of decolonization; history of economic thought; history of national income accounting

Indexed keywords

EID: 79960447711     PISSN: 17400228     EISSN: 17400236     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1740022811000027     Document Type: Article

References (134)

1. Colin Clark, The conditions of economic progress, London: Macmillan, 1940, introduction
2. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Indicators/OfficialList. htm (consulted 26 October2010).
3. Immanuel Wallerstein, Open the social sciences, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996;
4. Judy Klein and Mary Morgan, eds., The age of economic measurement, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
5. Albert O. Hirschman, 'The rise and decline of development economics', in Albert O. Hirschman, Essays in trespassing: economics to politics and beyond, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 1-24;
6. Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton, Doctrines of development, New York: Routledge, 1996.
7. Margret Schabas, 'Coming together: history of economics as history of science', History of Political Economy, Ann. Suppl. 34, 2002, pp. 208-25;
8. Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny, eds., The practice turn in contemporary theory, New York: Routledge, 2001.
9. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007;
10. Mary Poovey, A history of the modern fact: problems of knowledge in the sciences of wealth and society, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
11. Michael Power, The audit society: rituals of verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997;
12. Tomo Suzuki, 'The epistemology of macroeconomic reality: the Keynesian revolution from an accounting point of view', Accounting, Organization and Society, 28, 2003, pp. 471-517.
13. Alain Desrosières, 'Du réalisme des objets de la comptabilité nationale', in Alain Desrosières, Gouverner par les nombres: l'argument statistique Tome II, Paris: Mines, 2008, pp. 257-70.
14. Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, Small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered, London: Blond & Briggs, 1973.
15. See Unger, 'Towards global equilibrium: American foundations and Indian modernization, 1950s to 1970s', in this issue, pp. 121-42.
16. Clifford Geertz, Local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology, New York: Basic Books, 1983.
17. For further details on this point see Daniel Speich, 'Der Blick von Lake Success: das Entwicklungsdenken der frü hen UNO als "lokales Wissen"', in Hubertus Bü schel and Daniel Speich, eds., Entwicklungswelten: Globalgeschichte der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009, pp. 143-74.
18. Karin Knorr Cetina, Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis: zur Anthropologie der Naturwissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp;
19. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory life: the social construction of scientific facts, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979.
20. I am highly indebted to the work of Mary Morgan in this connection. See Mary S. Morgan, 'Seeking parts, looking for wholes', History of Observation in Economics Working Paper Series 1, University of Amsterdam, 2009, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=1496882 (consulted 8 December 2010).
21. Heinz W. Arndt, The rise and fall of economic growth: a study in contemporary thought, Melbourne: Longman, 1978.
22. Heinz W. Arndt, Economic development: the history of an idea, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 35.
23. Marion Fourcade, Economists and societies: discipline and profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
24. On the history of national income accounting, see Paul Studenski, The income of nations: theory, measurement, and analysis, past and present: a study in applied economics and statistics, New York: New York University Press, 1958.
25. More recent work includes Raymond Vernon, 'The politics of comparative economic statistics: three cultures and three cases', in William Alonso and Paul Starr, eds., The politics of numbers, New York: Russell Sage, 1987, pp 61-82;
26. Robert A. Horvath, 'The rise of macroeconomic calculations in economic statistics', in Lorenz Krü ger et al., eds, The probabilistic revolution 2: ideas in the sciences, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 147-70;
27. Zoltan Kenessey, ed., The accounts of nations, Amsterdam: IOS Press, 1994;
28. Michael Ward, Quantifying the world: UN ideas and statistics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004.
29. Bruno Latour, Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 68.
30. Simon Kuznets, National income, 1929-1932, 73rd US Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Document No. 123, Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1934;
31. idem, 'National income', in Edwin R. A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopedia of the social sciences, New York: Macmillan, 1933, vol. 11, pp. 205-24;
32. Mark Perlman, 'Political purpose and the national accounts', in William Alonso and Paul Starr, eds., The politics of numbers, New York: Russell Sage, 1987, pp. 133-53.
33. Kuznets, 'National income', p. 205.
34. See also Vibha Kapuria-Foreman and Mark Perlman, 'An economic historian's economist: remembering Simon Kuznets', Economic Journal, 105, 433, 1995, pp. 1524-47.
35. Bruno Latour, 'Drawing things together', in Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar, eds., Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990, p. 27.
36. For the history of statistical time series, see Judy L. Klein, Statistical visions in time: a history of time series analysis, 1662-1938, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
37. The immediate problem at hand was, of course, the change in prices over time. For the history of techniques of deflation, see Studenski, Income of nations, pp. 217ff.
38. William Malcolm Hailey, An African survey: a study of problems arising in Africa south of the Sahara, London: Oxford University Press, 1938.
39. Phyllis Deane, The measurement of colonial national incomes: an experiment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948, p. 152.
40. Phyllis Deane, Colonial social accounting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, p. 115.
41. A. R. Prest and I. G. Stewart, National income of Nigeria, London: HSMO, 1953, p. 4.
42. Morgan, 'Seeking parts', pp. 28 and 32.
43. On Stone, see M. Hashem Pesaran and G. C. Harcourt, 'Life and work of John Richard Nicholas Stone 1913-1991', Economic Journal, 110, 461, 2000, pp. F146-65;
44. Flavio Comim, 'Richard Stone and measurement criteria for national accounts', in Klein and Morgan, The age, pp. 213-34.
45. Alan T. Peacock and Douglas Dosser, The national income of Tanganyika 1952-54, London: HMSO, 1958, p. 16.
46. Here, theoretical propositions by Karl Polanyi met empirical substance: Karl Polanyi, 'The economy as instituted process', in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and market in the early empires: economies in history and theory, Glencoe: Free Press, 1957, pp. 243-69.
47. A 'substantivist' position was proposed by, for example, George Dalton, 'Economic theory and primitive society', American Anthropologist, n.s. 63, 1, 1961, pp. 1-25.
48. A 'formalist' position is established in Harold K. Schneider, 'A model of African indigenous economy and society', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 7, 1, 1964, pp. 37-55.
49. For a general overview, see Richard R. Wilk, Economies and cultures: foundations of economic anthropology, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996.
50. C. J. Martin, 'The development and diversity of national income series in East Africa since 1947', in L. H. Samuels, ed., African studies in income and wealth, Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1963, pp. 333-49.
51. T. A. Kennedy, H. W. Ord, and David Walker, 'On the calculation and interpretation of national accounting material in East Africa', in Samuels, African studies, p. 393.
52. William O. Jones, 'Colonial social accounting', Journal of the American Statistical Association, 50, 271, 1955, p. 665.
53. Dudley Seers, 'The role of national income estimates in the statistical policy of an under-developed area', Review of Economic Studies, 20, 3, 1952, p. 166.
54. See also idem, 'The political economy of national accounting', in Alec Cairncross and Mohinder Puri, eds., Employment, income distribution and development strategy: problems of the developing countries: essays in honour of H. W. Singer, London: Macmillan, 1976, pp. 193-210.
55. Seers, 'Role', p. 160.
56. W. Arthur Lewis, The theory of economic growth, London: Allen & Unwin, 1955, p. 202.
57. United Nations Statistical Office, A system of national accounts and supporting tables, New York: United Nations, 1953.
58. S. Herbert Frankel, 'United Nations primer for development: reply', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 67, 2, 1953, pp. 280-5;
59. P. T. Bauer, 'The United Nations report on the economic development of underdeveloped countries', Economic Journal, 63, 249, 1953, pp. 210-22.
60. Richard Stone, quoted in Milton Gilbert, 'The measurement of national wealth: discussion', Econometrica, 17, 1949, p. 261.
61. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, The sorcerer's apprentice, translated by Edwin Zeydel in Goethe, the Lyrist: 100 poems in new translations, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.
62. Smithies, quoted in Gilbert, 'Measurement', p. 269.
63. Milton Gilbert, ed., Income and wealth, series 3, Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1953;
64. Samuels, African studies.
65. Ester Boserup, Woman's role in economic development, London: Allen & Unwin, 1970;
66. Hans W. Singer and Richard Jolly, Employment, incomes and equality. A strategy for increasing productive employment in Kenya, Geneva: International Labour Office, 1972.
67. Charles I. Jones, Introduction to economic growth, New York: Norton, 2002. The topic has become 'hot' again with the global economic crisis of 2008-09.
68. See Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Paris: Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi-Commission, 2009.
69. Kuznets sharply criticized Colin Clark's comparison between Chinese and US economic performance: Simon Kuznets, 'National income and industrial structure', Econometrica, 17, 1949, pp. 205-41.
70. He substantiated the argument in idem, 'International differences in income levels: reflections on their causes', Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2, 1, 1953, pp. 3-26.
71. A series of voluminous studies on 'Quantitiative aspects of economic growth' followed in the same journal between 1956 and 1964.
72. For the notion of epistemic spaces, see Hans-Jö rg Rheinberger, Toward a history of epistemic things: synthesizing proteins in the test tube, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
73. A typical example for a comparative study taking Mexican performance as a benchmark for Africa is G. J. Ligthart and B. Abbai, 'Economic development in Africa: aims and possibilities', in Austin G. Robinson, ed., Economic development for Africa, south of the Sahara, London: Macmillan, 1964, pp. 3-47.
74. Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, British economic growth 1688-1959: trends and structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
75. The new perspective was strongly promoted by Alexander Gerschenkron, 'Economic backwardness in historical perspective', in Bert F. Hoselitz, ed., The progress of underdeveloped areas, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952, pp. 3-29.
76. For an overview, see Cristel de Rouvray, "'Old" economic history in the United States 1939-1954', Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 26, 2, 2004, pp. 221-39;
77. John S. Lyons, Louis P. Cain, and Samuel H. Williamson, eds., Reflections on the cliometrics revolution: conversations with economic historians, London: Routledge, 2008.
78. Angus Maddison, Contours of the world economy, 1-2030 AD: essays in macro-economic history, Oxford,: Oxford University Press, 2007.
79. The problem has been discussed for population statistics in Libby Schweber, Disciplining statistics. Demography and vital statistics in France and England, 1830-1885, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
80. Alain Desrosières, 'Managing the economy', in Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross, eds., The modern social sciences, Cambridge History of the Sciences 7, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 553-64, here p. 560.
81. Stuart Hall, 'The West and the rest', in Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, eds., Formations of modernity, Milton Keynes: Polity Press, pp. 275-320.
82. See Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with guns: authoritarian development and US-Indonesian relations, 1960-1968, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.
83. On civilizing missions, see Boris Barth and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Zivilisierungsmissionen: imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2005.
84. John Maynard Keynes, How to pay for the war, London: Macmillan, 1940;
85. Angus Maddison, 'Quantifying and interpreting world development: macromeasurement before and after Colin Clark', Australian Economic History Review, 44, 1, 2004, pp. 1-34.
86. On the relationship between economic theory and operations research during the Second World War, see Philip Mirowski, 'Cyborg agonistes: economics meets operations research in mid-century', Social Studies of Science, 29, 5, 1999, pp. 685-718.
87. John Maynard Keynes, The general theory of employment, interest and money, London: Macmillan, 1936.
88. For Keynes' international impact, see Peter A. Hall, ed., The political power of economic ideas: Keynesianism across nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
89. Roy Harrod, The life of John Maynard Keynes, London: Macmillan, 1951, pp. 501ff.
90. Germany went a 'Sonderweg'. Early attempts at professionalizing macroeconomic statistics fell victim to the dynamics of a polycentric state administration in 1936. See J. Adam Tooze, Statistics and the German state, 1900-1945: the making of modern economic knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, ch. 6. After 1945, German national accounting had to regain plausibility.
91. On West Germany, see Alexander Nützenadel, Stunde der Ö konomen: Wissenschaft, Politik und Expertenkultur in der Bundesrepublik 1949-1974, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005.
92. Most local experiences in national income accounting have been registered by Studenski, Income of nations.
93. Pierre Bauchet, La planification française: quinze ans d'expérience, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962;
94. François Fourquet, Les comptes de la puissance: histoire de la comptabilité nationale et du plan, Paris: Encres, 1980;
95. André Vanoli, Une histoire de la comptabilité nationale, Paris: La Découverte, 2002.
96. Marcel Boumans, How economists model the world into numbers, London: Routledge, 2005.
97. For the notion of real experiments - 'Realexperimente' - see Matthias Gross and Wolfgang Krohn, 'Society as experiment: sociological foundations for a self-experimental society', History of the Human Sciences, 18, 2, 2005, pp. 63-86.
98. Harold James, International monetary cooperation since Bretton Woods, Washington, DC: IMF, 1996.
99. Truman promised to the world 'a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas'. Dennis Merrill, ed., The Point Four Program: reaching out to help the less developed countries, Documentary History of the Truman Presidency 27, Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1999, pp. 4-5.
100. On Truman see generally Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, The first Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, containment, and the remaking of liberal internationalism, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2006.
101. Herbert Vere Evatt, The United Nations, London: Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 127.
102. Eugene Staley, World economic development: effects on advanced industrial countries, Montreal: International Labour Office, 1944.
103. On Staley, see David Ekbladh, The great American mission: modernization and the construction of an American world order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
104. On the ILO see Daniel Maul, Menschenrechte, Sozialpolitik und Dekolonisation: die internationale Arbeitsorganisation (IAO) 1940-1970, Essen: Klartext, 2007.
105. United Nations Department of Economic Affairs, Economic report: salient features of the world economic situation 1945-47, Lake Success, NY: United Nations, 1948, p. 243.
106. Staffan Mü ller-Wille, 'Race et appartenance ethnique: la diversité humaine et l'UNESCO Déclarations sur la race (1950 et 1951)', in UNESCO, 60 ans d'histoire de l'UNESCO, Actes du colloque international, Paris, 16-18 novembre 2005, Paris: UNESCO, pp. 211-20.
107. Kuznets, 'International differences', p. 10.
108. See e.g. Hugh L. Keenleyside, International aid: a summary: with special reference to the programmes of the United Nations, New York: James H. Heineman, 1966, p. 37ff.
109. Trygve Lie, 'Opening statement at first UN Technical Assistance Conference', in Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote, eds., Public papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, 1: Trygve Lie 1946-1953, New York: Columbia University Press, 1969, p. 311.
110. Frederick Cooper, 'Modernizing bureaucrats, backward Africans, and the development concept', in Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds., International development and the social sciences: essays on the history and politics of knowledge, Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 1997, pp. 64-92.
111. Dietmar Rothermund, 'Indien: von der Planwirtschaft zur Liberalisierung', in Wolfram Fischer, ed., Lebensstandard und Wirtschaftssysteme: Studien im Auftrage des Wissenschaftsfonds der DG Bank, Frankfurt am Main: Fritz Knapp, 1995, pp. 501-42.
112. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, The approach of operational research to planning in India, Calcutta: Statistical Publishing Society, 1955;
113. C. R. Rao, 'Prasantha Chandra Mahalanobis 1893-1972, Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 19, 1973, pp. 454-92;
114. V. K. R. V. Rao and S. L. Rao, The partial memoirs of V. K. R. V. Rao, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
115. Tom Mboya, 'Tensions in African development', in Tom Mboya, ed., The challenge of nationhood: a collection of speeches and writings, Nairobi: Heinemann, 1970, pp. 24-33;
116. B. T. G. Chidzero, 'The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa', African Studies Bulletin, 6, 2, 1963, pp. 1-5.
117. Robert L. Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis and the birth of development economics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, chs. 4, 5, and 6;
118. Craig N. Murphy, The United Nations Development Programme: a better way?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, ch. 5.
119. Edgar J. Dosman, The life and times of Raú l Prebisch, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008, ch. 14.
120. Clive S. Gray, Inside independent Nigeria: diaries of Wolfang Stolper, 1960-1962, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003;
121. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003; Mary Morgan, "'On a mission" with mutable mobiles', Working papers on the nature of evidence: how well do 'facts' travel?, 34, 2008, Department of Economic History, London School of Economics, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22500/1/3408Morgan.pdf (consulted 9 December 2010).
122. Adebayo Adedeji, 'The ECA: forging a future for Africa', in Yves Berthelot, ed., Unity and diversity in development ideas: perspectives from the UN Regional Commissions, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 233-306;
123. Bahgat El-Tawil, 'Statistical activities of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa', Journal of Modern African Studies, 3, 3, 1965, pp. 437-9.
124. Chidzero, 'United Nations Economic Commission'.
125. Richard M. Barkay, 'The statistical macro-economic framework needed in development planning in Africa', in Samuels, African Studies, p. 85. I thank Mary S. Morgan for bringing this quote to my attention.
126. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: sovereignty, international relations, and the Third World, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990;
127. Bertrand Badie, L'état importé : essai sur l'occidentalisation de l'ordre politique, Paris: Fayard, 1992.
128. Frederick Cooper, 'The dialectics of decolonization: nationalism and labour movements in post-war French Africa', in Frederick Cooper and Laura Ann Stoler, eds., Tensions of empire: colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, Berekley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, pp. 406-35;
129. Daniel Speich, 'The Kenyan style of "African socialism": developmental knowledge claims and the explanatory limits of the Cold War', Diplomatic History, 33, 3, 2009, pp. 449-66.
130. Peter J. Boettke, ed., The collapse of development planning, New York: New York University Press, 1994.
131. It is interesting to note that these benchmarks created an incentive for underdeveloped countries to keep their official national income figures low: Vernon, 'Politics', p. 65.
132. Carl E. Pletsch, 'The three worlds, or the division of social scientific labor, circa 1950-1975', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23, 4, 1981, pp. 565-90.
133. Mary Morgan, 'Perspective: making measuring instruments', in Klein and Morgan, The age, pp. 235-51.
134. The limitations of national sovereignty in the postcolonial world order are analysed in Antony Anghie, Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.