Unambiguous Ambiguity

Heinz W. Arndt, in his Economic Development: The History of An Idea (1987: 6), argues that “economic growth was unambiguous in its meaning. The question was why people thought such growth increasingly desirable for some years and then became doubtful.” The idea of an ever-increasing gross national product and pro capita income was seen as a straightforward and seemingly accurate methodology to measure and practice the linear progression of a nation out of its pre-modern phase into an industrial and modern era. Yet, over time such certainty has become doubtful. The solution to that puzzle had soon emerged, as Arndt (1987: 7) contends, from the very idea of development – as opposed to economic growth: “[d]evelopment, in contrast, has meant almost all things to all men and women. This story has no simple plot. If there is a central theme, it is … one of increasing complexity and divergence.” It is the very complexity of the phenomenon of development that has placed economic growth measurements within a broader discourse and made it one indicator among others, certainly necessary but not sufficient.


An example of this dialectic is represented by the economic analysis I presented in one of my previous works: An Augmented Growth Model Including Cultural Attitudes Toward Work (2005). Such analysis has not led to any conclusive findings in terms of the relevance of cultural aspects in a discourse of economic development.

The findings do not support the macroeconomic theory in its totality. These statistical results seem unable to capture some aspects of socioeconomic development – such as the importance of education and the relevance of culture in economic activities – that are recognized as crucial in other fields of study.

Drawing from hermeneutic theory, one can legitimately consider the economic analysis of growth as an integral component of the social text that, along side with the fixed text of the conversations and the other historical documents, becomes the principle data source for this research.

Paul Ricoeur (1981: 152) points out the two possibilities that are engendered by “the eclipse of the surrounding world by the quasi-world of text.” On the one hand, the reader can “remain in the suspense of the text, treating it as a worldless and authorless object” (Ricoeur 1981: 152). In this case, one can only explain the text in terms of its internal relations and its structure, and perhaps its statistical correlations. On the other hand, one “can lift the suspense and fulfill the text … restoring it to living communication.” In this case, as Ricoeur (1981: 152) argues, “we interpret the text.”

Within the realm of social sciences, and specifically when researching social and economic development, the idea of exerting one’s ability to interpret may seem elusive and inconclusive. That is from a positivistic conceptual framework. The theory of interpretation, developed by Paul Ricoeur (1981: 158), suggests a “more complementary and reciprocal relation between explanation and interpretation.” John Thompson (in Ricoeur 1981: 16) points out that Ricoeur contends that human action, no less than literary texts, “displays a sense as well as a reference; it possesses an internal structure as well as projecting a possible world,” that is to say, “a potential mode of human existence which can be unfolded through a process of interpretation.”

It is precisely such “potential mode of human existence [italics mine]” that the economist Heinz W. Arndt (1987: 7) was acknowledging when noting that development “has meant almost all things to all men and women.” It is such a mode of human existence that Martin Heidegger (1972: 31) was laying the foundation of when declaring that “all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has … remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and … its fundamental task.” It is the individual and communal historicity of a person and his or her own community that shapes the hopes for an improved future and solicits actions in the present, the only lived time at one’s disposal. Richard Kearney (2001: 1-2) elaborates on Heidegger’s intuition by challenging the classical “metaphysical tendency to subordinate the possible to the actual as the insufficient to the sufficient,” and by “refusing to impose a kingdom [that is, a universally established development standard], or to declare it already accomplished from the beginning … [in so doing, each] person carries within him/herself the capacity to be transfigured … and to transfigure … [a given historical situation] by making … possibility ever more incarnate and alive.”

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."

Interpretive Development Implies A Different Understanding of Language

I start this blog with the intention to share some reflections on the work that I conduct. My occupation and interest revolve around the field of socio-economic development, and specifically in monitoring and evaluation.

The nature, manifestations, and sustainability of change in individuals and communities have always fascinated me.
Most researchers in applied social sciences rely on the survey method using statistical techniques for analysis. In the recent past, there has been emphasis on qualitative research approaches, such as grounded theory, ethnography, case histories, and action research.

However, whether quantitative or qualitative in approach, language has been assumed to be a representational carrier of meaning, a receptacle that holds work in order to represent the world.


This concept of language reflects the basic tenets of logical positivism and derives, for the most part, from logic, the foundations of mathematics, and the paradigm for basic research in the physical sciences. The Cartesian approach is based on the presumed discovery of law-like generalizations that serve as the basis for deductive explanation and predictions.

From within a tradition of critical theory, many social scientists and philosophers over the last several generations have critiqued the positivist framework as a basis for research in social science.

Although few researchers will admit to being positivists, the legacy of logical positivism still pervades contemporary social inquiry today. For positivists, the relation of theory to practice is chiefly technical, because they seek to use general laws and manipulate a desired state of affairs. However, the question of which state of affairs should be produced is not to be resolved scientifically. Scientific inquiry is value-free within this framework, whereby the empirical basis of science is composed of observable objects or events that, in turn, serve as part of the program for a unity of science.

Many writers have critiqued this rationality and have demonstrated problems with using the logical positivist frameworks as the basis for social inquiry. The common element in all these traditions is the recognition that the positivist approach has neglected the meanings that are at the basis of social reality. This tradition opens the way to a more historically situated, non-algorithmic, flexible understanding of human rationality, one which highlights the tacit dimension of human judgment and imagination and is sensitive to the unsuspected contingencies and genuine novelties encountered in particular situations.

The difference between a positivist approach and an interpretive approach, most simply stated, is in how language is viewed – language as a tool representing the world or language as a medium through which we interpret and begin the change our selves and our conditions.