Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (89 page)

If this was a challenge, it was also an opportunity. It reaffirmed the exhilaration he drew from working with Latin Americans. Part of the disappointment of
Shifting Involvements
was that it was the product of internal conversations and fervent arguments with himself and others—mainly conducted in his head and on paper; it was an extension of the dialogues he had had with Machiavelli and Smith, Olson and Sen. What got lost in all the folding inward was his eye for surroundings, the petites idées drawn from watching everyday behaviors. Not a few reviewers made this point and it must have made him wince—for his ability to observe was something of a badge of honor. He could have holed up at the IAS, sheltered by its seclusion and privilege to seek redemption in a new book, or, as many do, used his place in the world as a fortress from which to volley attacks on his critics. Or, he could easily have cut and pasted a new version of old thoughts, another occupational hazard of the scholar. Instead, he opted for an entirely different tack. He left the institute for the world. It was in this context that he decided to take his yearning for a social science for one’s grandchildren—one that would transcend the debate between an objective and a normative approach by rediscovering the pleasures and inspirations of looking outward, not inward—to rethink big issues by going back to some of his origins.

The pretext came from yet another routine invitation to review some programs for the Inter-American Foundation. This evaluation became anything but a text for institutional consumption. Created by Congress in 1969 to support popular initiatives to defeat poverty in Latin America,
the Inter-American Foundation presented Hirschman with an opportunity to go back to the field, and to the one he knew best, Latin America. Ironically, it would lead to his least well known publication—but one that is arguably his most effective empirical study, the work of the eye of a seasoned observer on a mission to
show
how wrong the rampant individualists were. If
Shifting Involvement
had failed to make the theoretical case,
Getting Ahead Collectively: Grassroots Experiences in Latin America
(1984) made it in a different, and one might argue, more compelling way because it brought out a surer, more confident Hirschman.

Peter Hakim, the recently appointed director of planning and research for the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) had met Hirschman while he was working at the Ford Foundation office in Chile during and after the Allende years; Hakim was then, and remained, impressed by his range and talents. Almost from the instant he moved from Ford to the IAF, he had suggested to its newish president Peter Bell, another Ford Foundation veteran, that the famous development economist be enlisted to their organization’s efforts. There was more, however, to the fantasy than just bringing in a great mind. Hakim and Bell wanted to engage more social science in their work. Hakim saw an issue that worried him: as he flipped through the reports on all the grassroots projects in Latin America, it became apparent that there was a pattern—money was going to the hands of beneficiaries and not the brokers or bureaucrats, which was the spirit of the organization. But the expected benefits, when clear, often seemed to fall short. “What is going on here?” Hakim wondered. His first move was to enlist Judith Tendler, by now a brilliant researcher who had perfected, and in some respects surpassed, Hirschman’s eye for finding the hidden and unexpected benefits and hazards of development projects. Still, Hakim wanted Hirschman in; he sensed that the organization lacked an overall vision of what to expect and how to assess it. Unlike the more familiar aid agencies, this one was not dedicated to the expensive mega-projects and champagne-bottle-smashing inaugurations Hirschman studied for the World Bank almost two decades before, but rather to asking what poor people wanted and helping them get it. However, the case reports of the Inter-American Foundation assembled from
field statements did not add up to an uplifting narrative. They read like a grab bag of stopgap efforts to prevent the poor from getting poorer. Was there an alternative narrative, and therefore purpose, for the organization? Hakim and Bell invited Hirschman to Washington for a conversation in early 1982, just as
Shifting Involvements
was about to appear. Hirschman went and was intrigued by the organization and the problem.
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The precise timing of Hirschman’s decision to embark on the project is important but unclear. Did the hard-hitting reviews come about before his decision to join the Inter-American Foundation? Did he incline this way even before the disappointment with the book? Was his decision to return to the development world at least one more time, despite his epitaph in “Rise and Decline of Development Economics,” a preemption or reaction to the phenomenological world? We cannot know for sure. But Hirschman’s zeal and style suggests that there was probably something pendular in his response; after his speculative “conceptual novel,” the urge was for something more grounded. Not long after the meeting in Washington, he explained to Hakim that he had a sabbatical from the IAS coming in the spring of 1983, that he wished to undertake a comprehensive, sweeping study—not a formal “evaluation”—of a selection of projects, and that he required no salary, but simply travel expenses for him and Sarah (who would accompany him in the same fashion she had in
Development Projects Observed
, but this time she was much more his muse). After sorting out with one of the IAF staff members, Steve Vetter, which projects to select, Hirschman crafted an elaborate itinerary with precise dates, locations, and a promise to deliver a draft report by the end of June 1983. Vetter likened his task to preparing of a smorgasbord: “Having read some of your earlier publications, I suspect you have a voracious appetite. Will we be able to feed you enough?”
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He needn’t have worried. Hirschman was starving. When Hakim got the plan he was shocked. This seemed far too ambitious and far too carefully choreographed—given the uncertainties of buses, airplanes, and keeping peoples’ schedules, was this going to be a nightmare for his staff? He needn’t have worried. The Hirschmans made all their flights, all their deadlines—right down to the submission of the final report. Indeed, Hakim’s staff “fell in love” with
the evaluators. They were undemanding, self-sufficient, and accepted all hardships. After working out a questionnaire with Judith Tendler, off he went with Sarah on a breakneck tour from January until June 1983 of forty-five projects scattered across six countries: Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Uruguay.

Dominican Republic: January 30–February 12

Colombia: February 13–March 10

Peru: March 11–25

Chile (without Sarah): March 26–April 18

Argentina (without Sarah): April 19–22

Uruguay (Sarah rejoins): April 23–May 6

Brazil: May 7–June 5

Field work brought back a Hirschman that had gone dormant since his “retreat” into history and his return to contemporary affairs with
Shifting Involvements
. If reviewers were quick to point out that the book was long on anecdotes and quotes from classical writers but short on the kind of evidence they expected, Hirschman let his observational antennae go to work. While he used the questionnaire that he and Tendler had designed, he was also flexible and adaptive according to each case study and did not let the matrix of questions get in the way of the stories that his subjects volunteered on their own. Indeed, one of Hirschman’s skills was to elicit details and minutiae as if they were not evaluators but old friends. One of the foundation’s officers, Anne Ternes, accompanied the Hirschmans through Argentina and testified to his aptitude and joy from field work. It was also a learning experience for her as well. “Traveling with Albert Hirschman was particularly helpful for a rep in a new country since he is a persistent, skillful and gentler poser of questions. People see that he is genuinely interested in their experience and respond with thoughtful answers.” She followed them around to Quilmes, a poor suburb on the fringes of Buenos Aires, where the IAF was supporting housing projects and which overlapped with a pioneering project designed by a group of social scientists at Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), the think tank established by Oscar Oszlak, Guillermo O’Donnell, and
others several years earlier. Critical was Mara del Carmen Feijoó, a grassroots scholar who had moved to Quilmes in 1971 as a left-wing militant and had affiliated with CEDES in 1978 to collaborate with Jelin on popular coping strategies among the urban marginalized classes—which brought her full-circle to the
barrio
where she had cut her political teeth. Working closely with local priests, Feijoó had integrated into local networks of families who had seized empty lots of land to create ramshackle houses. She became a kind of intermediator for the Hirschmans’ entry into the world of activism from below, revealing a world of protagonism among those often seen as bereft of organizing ability. Sarah and María would establish in this
villa miseria
the first Argentine outpost of a movement that Sarah had founded in the United States devoted to adult reading groups among poor communities, People and Stories. María had set up her research-activist program in 1981, aimed originally at erecting a popular church in the neighborhood—if it could be called that—of the Virgen de Luján, and through contacts with People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos—she incorporated an important dimension of popular access to culture. By April 1983 it was poised to launch; María and Sarah would subsequently write a moving testament to the experiment, one that would leave a deep imprint on how Albert would tackle his study of grassroots economic activity.
¹⁷

The mood in Argentina was a mixture of horror and hope, just the kind of setting to whet Hirschman’s appetite. The military regime was crumbling in the wake of the debacle of the Malvinas War, and the toll of the human rights abuses was coming to light. Vigils and marches brought tens of thousands of protestors to the street. If the world had a capital of public, it was Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the economy was a shambles. In the name of free market liberalism, the generals had racked up monumental foreign debts and crippled the country’s industries. The poor were more afflicted than any. A slum in Quilmes painted a picture of squalor. Albert and Sarah held their noses as they stepped over piles of garbage and steered clear of scavenging dogs. One, whose skin was hanging off in clumps, was hard to distinguish from a small, pink pig. They stumbled on a young man whose back was matted with flies feeding
off his open sores. Overhead, spider webs of illegal power lines hung so low over the dirt paths between houses that they worried about getting electrocuted. A fishmonger led his emaciated horse and wagon through the mud. Everywhere, Hirschman noted, the “savage repression” of the dictatorship hung over the barrio; he felt an atmosphere of seething, but disorganized, anger. In spite of the scene, Padre Pichi, the pastor who kept the community development going, soldiered on. He, Albert, and Sarah spent hours huddled in discussions. Ternes was moved by Hirschman’s reaction to the scene. He may have been there to collect data—but he was also purveying
esperanza
. When his days in the field were done, he and Sarah accompanied Elizabeth Jelin to a workshop to exchange views about the broader political conjuncture and share their shantytown findings with the CEDES group of Jorge Balan, Enrique Tandeter, Oscar Oszlak, and others. While the situation was saturated with uncertainty, Hirschman urged them, from Padre Pichi to Elizabeth Jelin, not to give up hope. “One last word about Albert,” observed Ternes. “Having been witness to a good deal of the World War II and cognizant of the development frustrations of the past three decades, he sustains an outlook of fundamental optimism with a keen perception of peoples achievements, the sequences that learning takes, and how things move forward in fits and starts. He is a subtle morale booster.” During the sojourn in Buenos Aires, Jelin took the Hirschmans to the shores of the River Platte for dinner one night. Albert kept observing the waiters, admiring their skill and insouciance. When the bill arrived, Albert fumbled for his glasses; the waiter made a crack about his age—and Albert, captivated by the cocktail of insolent humor and lack of servility, fell into a long discussion with his fascinating waiter.
¹⁸

The searching, divining, exploratory senses are clear enough from the notebooks packed with his and Sarah’s handwriting. They record the testimonials of farmers, fishermen, priests, delivery boys, and teachers in mud-floored schoolhouses. Occasionally, Albert paused to record his own feelings: “The sheer reality of these places is overwhelming: one gets totally involved in less than a week. Doom threatens constantly while the possibility of salvation similarly beckons.”
¹⁹

Witnessing the have-nots struggle to improve their lives when the state had withdrawn any sense of obligation inspired him to return to some of his perennial concerns, to recycle some of his petites idées. After visiting the Colombian jungle town of Ráquira, where artisans had set up a cooperative to market their handicrafts, he noted how many toggled between tiny farms and their looms to make a living from several activities. The advent of the co-op, however, had induced some to sell their land and go into handicrafts full time and produce for the market “to cash in on the boom of
artisanías
.” The trouble now was not just that the market for these goods appeared to be saturated, but that the quality of the work had deteriorated now that the artisans ceased to make handicrafts for their own use. A Marxist would have had no trouble describing this as a classical capitalist change, and the materialist features did not escape Hirschman’s eye. But he also put a moral spin on what he saw.

How to recover good taste once taste has been corrupted is just as difficult as how to restore virtù in republics once they have been corrupted (Machiavelli showed how difficult it is …) … Perhaps it is easier to maintain the aesthetic attitude & pleasure in doing something traditional & beautiful when this is a part time activity … It is more enjoyed for its own sake than when it becomes the main breadearner & therefore acquires an instrumental character.
²⁰