Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman

by Jeremy Adelman

  Peter Hakim, the recently appointed director of planning and research for the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) had met Hirschman while he was working at the Ford Foundation office in Chile during and after the Allende years; Hakim was then, and remained, impressed by his range and talents. Almost from the instant he moved from Ford to the IAF, he had suggested to its newish president Peter Bell, another Ford Foundation veteran, that the famous development economist be enlisted to their organization’s efforts. There was more, however, to the fantasy than just bringing in a great mind. Hakim and Bell wanted to engage more social science in their work. Hakim saw an issue that worried him: as he flipped through the reports on all the grassroots projects in Latin America, it became apparent that there was a pattern—money was going to the hands of beneficiaries and not the brokers or bureaucrats, which was the spirit of the organization. But the expected benefits, when clear, often seemed to fall short. “What is going on here?” Hakim wondered. His first move was to enlist Judith Tendler, by now a brilliant researcher who had perfected, and in some respects surpassed, Hirschman’s eye for finding the hidden and unexpected benefits and hazards of development projects. Still, Hakim wanted Hirschman in; he sensed that the organization lacked an overall vision of what to expect and how to assess it. Unlike the more familiar aid agencies, this one was not dedicated to the expensive mega-projects and champagne-bottle-smashing inaugurations Hirschman studied for the World Bank almost two decades before, but rather to asking what poor people wanted and helping them get it. However, the case reports of the Inter-American Foundation assembled from field statements did not add up to an uplifting narrative. They read like a grab bag of stopgap efforts to prevent the poor from getting poorer. Was there an alternative narrative, and therefore purpose, for the organization? Hakim and Bell invited Hirschman to Washington for a conversation in early 1982, just as Shifting Involvements was about to appear. Hirschman went and was intrigued by the organization and the problem.15

  The precise timing of Hirschman’s decision to embark on the project is important but unclear. Did the hard-hitting reviews come about before his decision to join the Inter-American Foundation? Did he incline this way even before the disappointment with the book? Was his decision to return to the development world at least one more time, despite his epitaph in “Rise and Decline of Development Economics,” a preemption or reaction to the phenomenological world? We cannot know for sure. But Hirschman’s zeal and style suggests that there was probably something pendular in his response; after his speculative “conceptual novel,” the urge was for something more grounded. Not long after the meeting in Washington, he explained to Hakim that he had a sabbatical from the IAS coming in the spring of 1983, that he wished to undertake a comprehensive, sweeping study—not a formal “evaluation”—of a selection of projects, and that he required no salary, but simply travel expenses for him and Sarah (who would accompany him in the same fashion she had in Development Projects Observed, but this time she was much more his muse). After sorting out with one of the IAF staff members, Steve Vetter, which projects to select, Hirschman crafted an elaborate itinerary with precise dates, locations, and a promise to deliver a draft report by the end of June 1983. Vetter likened his task to preparing of a smorgasbord: “Having read some of your earlier publications, I suspect you have a voracious appetite. Will we be able to feed you enough?”16 He needn’t have worried. Hirschman was starving. When Hakim got the plan he was shocked. This seemed far too ambitious and far too carefully choreographed—given the uncertainties of buses, airplanes, and keeping peoples’ schedules, was this going to be a nightmare for his staff? He needn’t have worried. The Hirschmans made all their flights, all their deadlines—right down to the submission of the final report. Indeed, Hakim’s staff “fell in love” with the evaluators. They were undemanding, self-sufficient, and accepted all hardships. After working out a questionnaire with Judith Tendler, off he went with Sarah on a breakneck tour from January until June 1983 of forty-five projects scattered across six countries: Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Uruguay.

  Dominican Republic: January 30–February 12

  Colombia: February 13–March 10

  Peru: March 11–25

  Chile (without Sarah): March 26–April 18

  Argentina (without Sarah): April 19–22

  Uruguay (Sarah rejoins): April 23–May 6

  Brazil: May 7–June 5

  Field work brought back a Hirschman that had gone dormant since his “retreat” into history and his return to contemporary affairs with Shifting Involvements. If reviewers were quick to point out that the book was long on anecdotes and quotes from classical writers but short on the kind of evidence they expected, Hirschman let his observational antennae go to work. While he used the questionnaire that he and Tendler had designed, he was also flexible and adaptive according to each case study and did not let the matrix of questions get in the way of the stories that his subjects volunteered on their own. Indeed, one of Hirschman’s skills was to elicit details and minutiae as if they were not evaluators but old friends. One of the foundation’s officers, Anne Ternes, accompanied the Hirschmans through Argentina and testified to his aptitude and joy from field work. It was also a learning experience for her as well. “Traveling with Albert Hirschman was particularly helpful for a rep in a new country since he is a persistent, skillful and gentler poser of questions. People see that he is genuinely interested in their experience and respond with thoughtful answers.” She followed them around to Quilmes, a poor suburb on the fringes of Buenos Aires, where the IAF was supporting housing projects and which overlapped with a pioneering project designed by a group of social scientists at Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), the think tank established by Oscar Oszlak, Guillermo O’Donnell, and others several years earlier. Critical was Mara del Carmen Feijoó, a grassroots scholar who had moved to Quilmes in 1971 as a left-wing militant and had affiliated with CEDES in 1978 to collaborate with Jelin on popular coping strategies among the urban marginalized classes—which brought her full-circle to the barrio where she had cut her political teeth. Working closely with local priests, Feijoó had integrated into local networks of families who had seized empty lots of land to create ramshackle houses. She became a kind of intermediator for the Hirschmans’ entry into the world of activism from below, revealing a world of protagonism among those often seen as bereft of organizing ability. Sarah and María would establish in this villa miseria the first Argentine outpost of a movement that Sarah had founded in the United States devoted to adult reading groups among poor communities, People and Stories. María had set up her research-activist program in 1981, aimed originally at erecting a popular church in the neighborhood—if it could be called that—of the Virgen de Luján, and through contacts with People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos—she incorporated an important dimension of popular access to culture. By April 1983 it was poised to launch; María and Sarah would subsequently write a moving testament to the experiment, one that would leave a deep imprint on how Albert would tackle his study of grassroots economic activity.17

  The mood in Argentina was a mixture of horror and hope, just the kind of setting to whet Hirschman’s appetite. The military regime was crumbling in the wake of the debacle of the Malvinas War, and the toll of the human rights abuses was coming to light. Vigils and marches brought tens of thousands of protestors to the street. If the world had a capital of public, it was Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the economy was a shambles. In the name of free market liberalism, the generals had racked up monumental foreign debts and crippled the country’s industries. The poor were more afflicted than any. A slum in Quilmes painted a picture of squalor. Albert and Sarah held their noses as they stepped over piles of garbage and steered clear of scavenging dogs. One, whose skin was hanging off in clumps, was hard to distinguish from a small, pink pig. They stumbled on a young man whose back was matted with flies feeding off his open sores. Overhead, spider webs of illegal
power lines hung so low over the dirt paths between houses that they worried about getting electrocuted. A fishmonger led his emaciated horse and wagon through the mud. Everywhere, Hirschman noted, the “savage repression” of the dictatorship hung over the barrio; he felt an atmosphere of seething, but disorganized, anger. In spite of the scene, Padre Pichi, the pastor who kept the community development going, soldiered on. He, Albert, and Sarah spent hours huddled in discussions. Ternes was moved by Hirschman’s reaction to the scene. He may have been there to collect data—but he was also purveying esperanza. When his days in the field were done, he and Sarah accompanied Elizabeth Jelin to a workshop to exchange views about the broader political conjuncture and share their shantytown findings with the CEDES group of Jorge Balan, Enrique Tandeter, Oscar Oszlak, and others. While the situation was saturated with uncertainty, Hirschman urged them, from Padre Pichi to Elizabeth Jelin, not to give up hope. “One last word about Albert,” observed Ternes. “Having been witness to a good deal of the World War II and cognizant of the development frustrations of the past three decades, he sustains an outlook of fundamental optimism with a keen perception of peoples achievements, the sequences that learning takes, and how things move forward in fits and starts. He is a subtle morale booster.” During the sojourn in Buenos Aires, Jelin took the Hirschmans to the shores of the River Platte for dinner one night. Albert kept observing the waiters, admiring their skill and insouciance. When the bill arrived, Albert fumbled for his glasses; the waiter made a crack about his age—and Albert, captivated by the cocktail of insolent humor and lack of servility, fell into a long discussion with his fascinating waiter.18

  The searching, divining, exploratory senses are clear enough from the notebooks packed with his and Sarah’s handwriting. They record the testimonials of farmers, fishermen, priests, delivery boys, and teachers in mud-floored schoolhouses. Occasionally, Albert paused to record his own feelings: “The sheer reality of these places is overwhelming: one gets totally involved in less than a week. Doom threatens constantly while the possibility of salvation similarly beckons.”19

  Witnessing the have-nots struggle to improve their lives when the state had withdrawn any sense of obligation inspired him to return to some of his perennial concerns, to recycle some of his petites idées. After visiting the Colombian jungle town of Ráquira, where artisans had set up a cooperative to market their handicrafts, he noted how many toggled between tiny farms and their looms to make a living from several activities. The advent of the co-op, however, had induced some to sell their land and go into handicrafts full time and produce for the market “to cash in on the boom of artisanías.” The trouble now was not just that the market for these goods appeared to be saturated, but that the quality of the work had deteriorated now that the artisans ceased to make handicrafts for their own use. A Marxist would have had no trouble describing this as a classical capitalist change, and the materialist features did not escape Hirschman’s eye. But he also put a moral spin on what he saw.

  How to recover good taste once taste has been corrupted is just as difficult as how to restore virtù in republics once they have been corrupted (Machiavelli showed how difficult it is …) … Perhaps it is easier to maintain the aesthetic attitude & pleasure in doing something traditional & beautiful when this is a part time activity … It is more enjoyed for its own sake than when it becomes the main breadearner & therefore acquires an instrumental character.20

  Moved and emboldened, Hirschman finished his long trip in São Paulo where he settled into an office at CEBRAP. He pored over his notes, reviewed documents, and wrote, furiously. Peter Hakim, by now itching with curiosity, inquired about the state of Hirschman’s work. Hirschman offered to send him a copy of the full draft—though warning him that it was all written longhand. Hakim accepted the offer, only to find the script completely illegible. (When I explained how I conducted my own research for this biography, his first reaction was, “But how can you read his writing?”) Hirschman consoled him by saying that he would ask his secretary at the institute (who was, by then, literate in his script) to type it up and offered to present his findings to the foundation staff.

  The occasion for the presentation of the report set the rumor mill going among the staff. Intrigued that an eminent scholar and his magnetic wife would be interested in poking in their files and looking at their projects, they were eager to hear the results. Some had been reading Hirschman’s previous work trying to anticipate his conclusions. Rapt, they gathered in the small auditorium of the foundation’s headquarters with Sarah and Judith Tendler present and listened to the stories about the effects of some modest projects they had incubated and supported for so many years. “For us,” recalled Sheldon Annis, “this was a big deal; the great man was coming.” When Albert stepped up to the front of the small meeting hall, he explained that one of the problems with economists “is that they economize on love.” People were astonished. This was hardly what they expected. “It floored us,” said Annis. When the flutter subsided, Hirschman observed that one source of the staff’s frustration was the feeling that they had to gauge the success of projects in terms that were easily quantified, which had often led them to overlook other variables, like love, civic purpose, and what in Hirschman’s childhood would have been called Bildung, improvement and self-cultivation for their own sake, development to harmonize the mind and heart, self and society. Sometimes people engage in economic activities for noneconomic reasons or summon noneconomic deeds for economic reasons. The point is: an evaluation had to be open to measures and motives that did not always conform to the prescribed model of costs and benefits. That an economist of Hirschman’s stature could give reasons for thinking about development in such expansive ways liberated hard-working staff from the sense that so much of their work was failing because “data” to prove rising productivity were so elusive. Few were more assured than Peter Bell who, unbeknown to those present, was worrying about the organization’s future. The debriefing was “an exciting occasion for us all,” he remembered.21

  What Hakim and his colleagues at the foundation learned was that they really were in the development business, even if it was not always easy to see. Indeed, even in failure there could be redemption—redemption through learning, and this is one of the themes he drove home from his narrative. Someone was explaining how it all worked—“Here it is,” Hirschman seemed to be saying, “This is what you are doing.” Determined to break the failure complex and show that reforms could work, even those emanating from the most downtrodden under the most inauspicious of political circumstances, Hirschman painted a very different portrait. To Hakim, it was luminous. All the reports that pointed to the shortfalls of each project—shortfalls compared to the grantees’ lofty aspirations—had missed the larger point. It had been a point driven home in Development Projects Observed (look at side effects!) and again in Shifting Involvements (let disappointments produce alternatives!). Consider the following passage from Shifting Involvements, which found evidence aplenty among the shantytowns and fishing villages of Latin America:

  We may simply be unable to conceive of the strictly limited advances, replete with compromises and concessions to opposing forces, that are the frequent outcomes of actions undertaken under the impulse of some magnificent vision. Given this propensity of the modern imagination to conjure up radical change, and its inability to visualize intermediate outcomes and halfway houses, the results of public action typically fall short of expectations. (p. 95)

  Improvable, not perfectible. Hirschman’s complicated, mixed, flawed, imperfect, mistake-prone citizen was on display, in fact more than on display, working. All around was evidence of human capacity to imagine social change—perhaps motivated by a magnificent vision but yielding to basic improvements. What was important was not to lose sight of the achievements, even if they were modest. Hirschman kept noting how dairy farmers and housing co-ops put people to work, lending a plebeian twist to streben. Projects may “fail” to yield their expectat
ions, but it did not mean they failed to move development along. Hirschman offered them a simple principle—“social energy”—to help illuminate how modest grants could help people create, direct, and expand communities’ and associations’ efforts to change the world around them. But the change was more evident in the ways that grants forced people to learn how to solve their problems; even if they did not finally solve the problem they set out to lick, they had acquired skills, created movements, and marshaled social energy that they could apply to other problems. This too was an old theme—learning—dating back to Strategy. But Hirschman had never lost his acumen for its role in social change. A little, unremarkable experience with his granddaughter led to the following entry in his diary:

  I show Lara (4 years old) how to prepare newspaper for making fire—she learns x from now on will do it exactly the same way. Perhaps it is not good to learn too many “useful” things too early in life, for then one will never question the moment one learnt. For innovation to be possible late learning may be essential.

  The commitment to late learning produced by social energy presented a master narrative the organization needed for itself and a way to think creatively about its mission. Hakim was delighted. “This was all just so exciting to hear,” he recalled.22

  When he finished writing up his notes, Hirschman realized that he had not just presented to the organization a story for itself, he was composing something that belonged to the arc of his own lifework. He returned to some of ideas that had been waylaid by his obsession to answer Mancur Olson. What drew his attention to the stories was how they reminded him of his own past. When he presented his preliminary findings to colleagues at the institute in early 1984, he noted that the venture had required that he have an open mind—“but not a blank one.” What filled his mind were his own older thoughts. He found himself picking up forgotten strands he had abandoned many years earlier—and it was undoubtedly a self-assuring exercise. “I continue to collect inverted, ‘wrong-way round’ or ‘cart-before-the-horse’ development sequences for a simple reason: the finding that such sequences exist ‘in nature’ expand the range of development possibilities.” Free from having to wait for necessary prerequisites meant that people needn’t feel paralyzed by mass poverty. In the face of a grinding debt crisis, there was still scope for improvement. What was true of social processes applied to himself as well; even a mature scholar of global repute could rediscover himself and the range of his own possibilities.23