The Cartesian "Doubt"

The field of socio-economic development work is simultaneously complex and ambiguous. Within this vexed compound of complexity and ambiguity resides hope for the amelioration of the human condition.

The Cartesian legacy, housed in Positivism, has dominated the historical and social sciences, the end goal being to reach the truth through data analysis in everyday practice. An objectivist or realist claim is based on the conviction that there is, or should be, some permanent, a-historical matrix or framework, to which one can ultimately appeal for understanding society.

Development efforts in the past half century primarily have been influenced by the positivist outlook in both philosophy and methodology. Modernization – through industrialization, technological transfer and other indicators of economic growth – was deemed essential toward the anticipated emancipation of the third world from colonial rule. For the third world to become modern, the alleviation of poverty, or more generally, the attainment of material progress was an imperative. Following this line of reasoning, science and technology on the one hand, and on the other, attitudes and behaviors, were seen as necessary components for economic growth. To replicate features that characterized the so-called advanced societies of the time, capital, science, and technology became the main progenitors that would create the conditions for development to succeed. Since the success of such an effort heavily depended on the accuracy of the research methodologies, along with the predictive ability of the concomitant models, an extraordinary emphasis was placed on the scientific formality of carrying out development work.


Notwithstanding the quest for scientific simplicity and predictability, the development plot remains complex and heterogeneous. Marked by Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of the Scientific Revolutions, there has been an increasing acknowledgment of a paradigm shift. This new paradigm, emerging now for over three decades, is one in which cultural analysis is not locked away from its proper object, namely, the informal logic of actual everyday life – the centerpiece of development.

One of the most interesting fields where such a paradigmatic transition has taken place is anthropology. Anthropology today is no longer beholden to structuralism, and has shifted stance toward the interpretive. This interpretive anthropology takes on practical quality by enlarging space for human discourse. By inscribing social discourse into text that holds the meaning of social interaction, the ethnographer transforms social discourse from a passing event, into an interpretable account that exists over time.

Martin Heidegger made this shift possible by taking an ontological turn that began the move away from traditional concerns of subject and object, and headed to analysis of human beings in-the-world who speak to one another. What was traditionally a methodological category concerned with knowledge, understanding becomes, in light of Heidegger’s turn, something integral to human existence, overriding the traditional dichotomy of object and subject. Thus, human understanding is comprehended in terms of an historical process through which the possibilities and potentials of a person are disclosed. And it is precisely in this historical process that traditions and communities are maintained and extended over time in different socio-political and socio-historical contexts. In this light, development study and practice assume a radically new orientation. Concerns over modernization – through industrialization and the transfer of capital, technology, and knowledge – democratization and good governance, education and the promotion of health care are all heterogeneous elements of an unfolding social discourse that can be fixed into a historical narrative.

The application of the “textual” approach to development concedes the emergence of a new paradigm. A paradigm where interpretive anthropology – that is anthropology informed by critical hermeneutics – offers a foundation to the “quark” of social sciences: the inscription of social discourse, composed of numerical data, narratives, traditions, historical events. The result is a social text to be analyzed not as an experimental science in search of a law, rather as an interpretive one in search of meaning.

Economic Data and the Bathtub

Recently, the weekly Magazine published by the New York Times (August 17th) featured a story titled "Dr. Doom." The article, by Stephen Mihm, focuses on the work of one of the most interesting - but until recently obscure - living economists: Nouriel Roubini.

Roubini is credited with foreseeing the, then-upcoming and now-current, economic crisis back in September 2006. The reaction to his inauspicious presentation from an audience of IMF economists was somewhat cold and incredulous. Mihm reports that as Roubini stepped down from the lectern after his talk, the moderator of the event gibed, "I think perhaps we will need a stiff drink after that."

Despite the initial take, Roubini proved to be right in his interpretation of the available economic data.

In 2006, the same data was accessible to the economic and financial community. So what was the more favorable condition or position that allowed Roubini to reach a different understanding and interpretation of the same texts?

It seems that his ability to marry rigorous mathematical models with the interpretation of historical political and economic institutions made indeed the difference. Mihm notices that Roubini's work was distinguished "not only by his conclusions but [in fact] also by his approach." By making extensive use of transnational comparisons and historical analogies, he employs a "subjective, nontechnical" paradigm.

Such paradigms allows him not to be trapped into modern economic theories and econometric models. These models typically rely, Mihm points out, "on the assumption that the near future is likely to be similar to the recent past, and thus it is rare that the models anticipate breaks in the economy."

Roubini compares his approach to that of Alan Greenspan, who once said to "pore over vaset quantities of technical economic data while sitting in the bathtuh, looking to sniffout where the economy was headed."