A/Another History of Managing International Development?

In the received history of international development, its management or development- management for short, emerged from the remnants of colonial administration. From here, development-management grew in prominence as an episteme and field of practice as a result of the post-World War II geopolitics (following Escobar, 1995; Cooke, 2004). The on-going professionalisation and managerialisation of international development, it has been argued, has since worked to make 'real' or essentialise abstract geographies such as the 'Third World' and 'Latin America' (Cooke, 2004, 2010). Departing from these received histories of development- management, in this paper we trace 'a' and 'another' history of development-management. Drawing on the history of development-management of the Tatas' corporate philanthropy, India's leading global corporate empire, we make two contributions. First, we trace 'another' history of development-management. That is, we argue, it originated elsewhere and in another time; and not in the 'First World' or the 'West', in the post-World War II period, as is commonly suggested. Second, we lay out 'a' history of expertise involved in development-management. Here we provide a differentiated history of development-management that, we argue, can be broken down into three phases. In the colonial period, the academic scientific expert led and managed development. From the 1930s onwards, the academic scientific expert was replaced by the Indianised social worker; and from the 1980s onwards, the development manager emerged as the expert in organising and managing development.