Hirschman’s Choice: Exiles and Obligations of an anti-Fascist

This essay uses the life history of Albert O. Hirschman, especially the years of his active political engagements that preceded his intellectual career, to explore the “micro-history” of choices about whether to stay and fight or back and flee. It also considers some of Hirschman’s own thinking about action—and the choices between exercising voice, loyalty, or defection, the bases of his influential book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Finally, it explores the ever-complicated connections between personal experience and theoretical reflection.Basé sur des éléments biographiques de la vie d’Albert O. Hirschman, en particulier les années de son engagement politique précédant sa carrière intellectuelle, cet essai explore la « micro-histoire » des choix qu’il fit : rester et combattre ou se retirer et fuir. L’essai étudie aussi la pensée de Hirschman sur l’action, c’est-à-dire le choix entre exercer le droit à la parole, la loyauté, ou se taire, alternatives explorées dans son ouvrage influent Exit, Voice and Loyalty. L’étude analyse enfin les relations infiniment compliquées entre expérience personnelle et réflexion théorique

Observando a Colombia: Albert O. Hirschman y la Economía del Desarrollo

Los años que Albert O. Hirschman vivió en Colombia le sirvieron para moldear el contenido de su principal publicación: La estrategia del desarrollo económico. La experiencia adquirida durante su estadía en Colombia, donde participó en misiones del gobierno que recorrieron todo el país, le permitió diseñar un método de investigación basado en las prácticas observadas de lo que la gente hacía, contrario a las visiones ortodoxas que planteaban normas a partir de lo que la gente debería hacer. Su crítica a la economía planificadora del desarrollo, basada en el crecimiento balanceado, planteaba la estrategia hacía el desarrollo económico no como una necesidad de superar la escasez de factores sino como una necesidad de mejorar la habilidad de los agentes para tomar decisiones. Sus observaciones de la cotidianidad colombiana le brindaron la evidencia necesaria para entender que los problemas se resolvían en la práctica y le permitieron generar estrategias para facilitar la solución de los problemas a partir del agente económico.Desarrollo económico, Albert O. Hirschman, estrategia

Hirschman’s Choice: Exiles and Obligations of an anti-Fascist

This essay uses the life history of Albert O. Hirschman, especially the years of his active political engagements that preceded his intellectual career, to explore the “micro-history” of choices about whether to stay and fight or back and flee. It also considers some of Hirschman’s own thinking about action—and the choices between exercising voice, loyalty, or defection, the bases of his influential book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Finally, it explores the ever-complicated connections between personal experience and theoretical reflection.Basé sur des éléments biographiques de la vie d’Albert O. Hirschman, en particulier les années de son engagement politique précédant sa carrière intellectuelle, cet essai explore la « micro-histoire » des choix qu’il fit : rester et combattre ou se retirer et fuir. L’essai étudie aussi la pensée de Hirschman sur l’action, c’est-à-dire le choix entre exercer le droit à la parole, la loyauté, ou se taire, alternatives explorées dans son ouvrage influent Exit, Voice and Loyalty. L’étude analyse enfin les relations infiniment compliquées entre expérience personnelle et réflexion théorique

The Rites of Statehood: Violence and Sovereignty in Spanish America, 1789-1821

This essay explores the varieties of expressions of political violence during the revolutionary conjuncture, 1789 to 1821, across Spanish America from New Spain to Buenos Aires. It challenges some of the familiar ways in which historians have pointed to violence as an inevitable effect of the end of empire, and instead argues that violence became a means to engage in the political process that brought down empire. At the same time, it argues that the role of violence in bringing down the old regime and creating new institutions and habits of rule and protest was at least as important as the role of the public sphere and elections, which historians have recently accented. Indeed, the essay suggests ways in which historians of the public sphere might consider the rituals and languages of violence as part of public conduct, while it was the opening of the public sphere that created a means, or space, to push vindictive patterns of violence into more vindictive directions. Violence was not of a piece, a constant display of carnage. The essay accordingly seeks to illustrate the varieties of uses of political violence and its changes over time, from the first crises of the 1790s to the widespread savagery of the 1810s

Empires, merchants, and the origins of politics in the Iberian Atlantic

This essay connects several fields of historical research about the age of revolutions in Latin America: the crisis of the Iberian Atlantic, the transformation of merchant capital, and the rise of new sources of political legitimacy.  It points to the importance of the slave trade in the South Atlantic, and how the crisis of empires had a fundamental effect on slave economies.  Warfare produced, therefore, a fiscal crisis of the empires and a social crisis of a regime of accumulation. The outcomes of the conjuncture were new social actors and new models of politics.  In the debate about whether the age of revolutions was one of continuity or discontinuity in Latin America, this essay makes the case for discontinuity.  It draws attention to the centrality of slavery to the nature of the regimes.  It also calls for attention to social and economic forces in the making of new political institutions and ideas.This essay connects several fields of historical research about the age of revolutions in Latin America: the crisis of the Iberian Atlantic, the transformation of merchant capital, and the rise of new sources of political legitimacy.  It points to the importance of the slave trade in the South Atlantic, and how the crisis of empires had a fundamental effect on slave economies.  Warfare produced, therefore, a fiscal crisis of the empires and a social crisis of a regime of accumulation. The outcomes of the conjuncture were new social actors and new models of politics.  In the debate about whether the age of revolutions was one of continuity or discontinuity in Latin America, this essay makes the case for discontinuity.  It draws attention to the centrality of slavery to the nature of the regimes.  It also calls for attention to social and economic forces in the making of new political institutions and ideas