Volume 3 Number 2 May 1970 Edited by: Rita Cruise O'Brien
'Don't send men. Send money' read the text of the now legendary Uganda telegram of the mid-sixties, a catchphrase enjoyed thoroughly among those in the aid business. This issue of the Bulletin takes a critical look at manpower aid, experts and foreign advisers in ldc's.
Volume 3 Number 3 July 1970 Edited by: Rita Cruise O'Brien and Clive Bell
One tends to think of University students in the third world as the budding elite -- educated to a style and at a cost which reinforces aspirations for a life far removed in income, status, power, and often even geographical distance from the mass of their fellow countrymen. No doubt, this is the pattern in most developing countries (as well as in many developed ones), even where graduate unemployment has reduced the expected earnings of the educated and introduced a demoralising delay before finding a job. But the student movement in certain countries of Latin America and recent events in Ethiopia and Ceylon make one wonder whether the picture might be beginning to change -- rhetoric becoming more genuine, and elitism giving place to serious involvement and more active political commitment.
Volume 3 Number 4 November 1970
It is obvious that no society can endure unbridled conflict among its members. For a fairly stable state of affairs to prevail, conflicts of interest have to be resolved according to certain "rules of the game" which all accept, however reluctantly. The fact that matters are so resolved for some length of time may result in one group being placed at a growing disadvantage compared with the rest. Eventually, they may attempt to have the "rules" changed, by revolution if all else fails. If they succeed, the old social order will be overthrown and "play" will then be conducted according to new rules. Marx's vision of the rise of socialism following the demise of capitalism is the prime example of such a (fundamental) change.
Volume 4 Number 1 October 1971 Edited by: Gordon Conway
Perhaps the most significant aspect of present day population growth and natural resource depletion is that both are on a scale quite without historical precedent. It is, of course, a great temptation in situations of this kind to project the likely future state of affairs which will come about if current trends are maintained, usually with rather gloomy results. Now it is well known that forecasting is a hazardous business, be it concerned with the weather or the level of economic activity. But this has not deterred a substantial and diverse group of physical and social scientists, supported by a large, if rather disparate, lay chorus, from asserting that explosive population growth in the third world and the levels of exploitation of non-renewable resources in the developed countries are combining to produce a set of conditions which are beyond the 'capacity of the planet' to sustain in the long run.
Despite the crude nature of the assumptions on which these projections are based, it has to be conceded that there is some force to them. The pity is that rational debate has been made more difficult by the strident and lurid tone of much of the language of the 'environmentalists'.
For example, one physicist calculated that if Adam and Eve had lived 10,000 years ago, and if they and their descendents had procreated at a compound rate of just 1 er cent per annum, the human race would now be a sphere of living flesh several galaxies in diameter, expanding radially at the speed of light -- if such were relativistically possible.
Volume 4 Number 2-3 March 1972 Edited by: Dudley Seers
Income distribution is a confusing term. What scope is it to be given? Is it to be treated in a purely economic sense, bringing in social and political factors only when they are found to be useful for or obstacles to changing the income differentials in an economy? Is the argument for changing the distribution of income to be grounded in essentially instrumental reasoning changing the structure of demand so as to reduce balance of payments burdens, creating an internal market for national industry, reducing incentives to invest in capital intensive projects which yield little employment and enhance political instability - or is it to find its basis in arguments about the virtues of equality as such?