ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a different approach to studying development and growth. It begins with a historical premise: that the core of both ideas – that nations "develop" through stages or discreet periods of socio-political organization and that something called "the economy" is an object that can be made to grow – are recent products of twentieth-century economic knowledge and political culture. The chapter explores how and why the concepts of growth and development emerged and how they evolved in the twentieth-century world. It focuses on the origins of the development and growth discourse in the United States and Europe. The chapter also focuses on how and why intellectuals and policymakers in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union sought to implement growth and development theories to "modernize" the countries of the Global South. The chapter explains some of the criticisms of growth, development, and modernization that have emerged since the 1960s.
