Rethinking the development experience

the long version

This book critically reappraises ideas about learning and economic development advanced by Albert O. Hirschman, one of the great pioneers in the field. The contributors - distinguished economists, development theorists, social scientists, and practitioners - show how Hirschman's innovative ideas bear on the theory, policy, and practice of development in the 1990s. In a postscript, Albert O. Hirschman, who is now professor emeritus at Princeton University, reflects on the evolution of his ideas, his cognitive style, and his propensity for self-subversion. Two appendixes present a candid MIT faculty discussion of the essays and Hirschman's musings in response to particular chapters and questions raised by the participants.