Toward a New Strategy for Development

Book excerpt: Toward a New Strategy for Development: A Rothko Chapel Colloquium is a collection of papers commissioned by the Rothko Chapel and presented at a colloquium held in Houston, Texas on February 3-5, 1977. The colloquium provided a forum for discussing the need for a new strategy for development, with emphasis on needs and programs from the perspectives of the developed countries at the center of the world's economic system and of the developing countries at its periphery, and from the standpoint of different disciplines. Comprised of 10 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to Marxism and its congruence with other neoclassical doctrines such as the Chicago School, followed by a discussion on development economics as well as the conditions that gave rise to the rapidly growing interest in development. The next chapter traces the origins and history of one major body of Latin American ideas on development since the early 1950s: the United Nation's Economic Commission for Latin America. Subsequent chapters explore internal issues of development within countries, with emphasis on urban and rural bias as well as factors that influence regional development policy; the postwar economic experience of the Third World; and the reactions of developed countries to calls for a new international economic order. This monograph will be of interest to economists and sociologists.