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Whither growth? International development, social indicators, and the politics of measurement, 1920s–1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2019

Stephen Macekura
Stephen Macekura*
Affiliation:
Department of International Studies, Indiana University, 355 North Jordan Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405-1105, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: smacekur@indiana.edu
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Abstract

Few concepts in the history of twentieth-century history proved as important as economic growth. Scholars such as Charles Maier, Robert Collins, and Timothy Mitchell have analysed how the notion that an entity called ‘the economy’ (defined by metrics such as Gross National Product, or GNP) could be made to grow came to define economic thought and policy worldwide. Yet there has been far less attention paid to the fact that neither growth nor GNP went without challenge during their emergence and global diffusion. This article focuses on one set of growth critics: those who advocated for ‘social indicators’ in international development policy during the 1960s and 1970s. It advances three overlapping arguments: that advocates for social indicators harkened back to early twentieth-century transnational efforts to make workers’ ‘standard of living’ the primary statistical framework for policy-makers; that, while supporters of social indicators expressed frustration with technocratic governance, their reform efforts nevertheless represented technocratic critiques of modernity; and finally, that one of the major reform efforts, Morris David Morris’s advocacy on behalf of the ‘Physical Quality of Life Index’ (PQLI), as an alternative measure of national wellbeing, ultimately struggled to challenge the GNP growth paradigm, and yet proved influential in spawning subsequent research into new measures and approaches to development.

Keywords

economic growthinternational developmentmeasurement of social indicatorstransnational history
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , July 2019 , pp. 261 - 279
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful for comments, criticisms, and opportunities to present earlier versions of this article from Sarah Milov, Brent Cebul, and the participants in the Movements and Directions in Capitalism Workshop Series at the University of Virginia; Stephen Gross and the participants in New York University’s Economic History Workshop; Felix Römer and the participants in the ‘Global Knowledge of Economic Inequality’ workshop at the German Historical Institute, London; and Nick Cullather, Amanda Waterhouse, and the editors and reviewers of the Journal of Global History.

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