ABSTRACT
How can one explain the selective memory about Development that emerged in the writings of scholars more attentive to its historical than its programmatic origins? How can one make sense of the amnesia that seemed to grip those who waxed eloquent about the benefits of "modernity" but were unprepared to confront its socioeconomic roots? The art of this kind of forgetting was carefully tended. The product neither of foreign policy interests nor Development policies alone, its sources lie elsewhere. The bias that affected the interpretation of Political Development, apparent in the discussion of some policy scientists (as the previous chapter has shown), was more than an expression of specialized interest on the part of those concerned with Political as opposed to Economic Development. It conveyed a view of politics and society that constituted another intermediary step in the definition of conventional interpretations of Development. According to this view, the socioeconomic origins of Development were subordinated to its political dimensions. And these were expressed largely in cold war terms.
