The Development of the Discourse of Development: MIT Intellectuals and South Asian Societies

Abstract

Examines the structural & political context under which one version of modernization theory emerged. The prolonged effort of US intellectuals in advising & attempting to redirect the process of development in India in the context of the Cold War is analyzed. One of the classic texts of modernization theory, W. W. Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth, emerged as a consequence of this encounter. A sociology of knowledge approach is deployed to analyze the complex configuration involving the Cold War, intellectuals' interest in using the occasion for the accumulation of career capital, etc, that contributed to the development of a specific discourse of development & the mapping out of the world into three worlds.