Giorgio Sebregondi: early contributions and seminal ideas for development studies E-Book

Enzo Caputo

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Giorgio Sebregondi è un iniziatore in Italia degli studi sullo sviluppo, nel secondo dopoguerra. I suoi insegnamenti sono di estrema attualità per ripensare l'approccio alla cooperazione internazionale allo sviluppo e valorizzare le esperienze migliori fatte in passato.

Leseprobe

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

The secular commitment to the development of society

A new role for the state and its citizens

OBSERVATIONS ON THE THEORY OF DEPRESSED REGIONS

One line of thought

What constitutes a depressed region?

The institutional dimension

Sociology

The economic theory of depressed regions

Government intervention: the 'guarantor' state

Substitute or extraordinary measures

The reference is to the internal debate at SVIMEZ

The 'guarantor' state

Preliminary conclusions on the theory of depressed regions

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY AND NEW FORMS OF DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION

The early 50s

Attending meetings of Economie et Humanisme

The meeting

On the conception of development (1953a)

On the economy of need and social movements

The letter to Lebret: Elements of a development policy

The secular period of intensification and expansion

A movement in support of social movements

The political space of development

The self-organization of social subjects and forms of direct democracy

The rejection of the economy of needs is the engine of development

Development assistance and universal perspectives for emancipation

The Italian example: between paternalist reformism and revolutionism

Managing the development process

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Enzo Caputo

Giorgio Sebregondi: Early Contributions and Topical Ideas for Development Studies

Note to this publication

The text reproduced here was completed in its current form in February 2012. It was widely circulated among those interested in the work of Giorgio Sebregondi and, more generally, in the problems of development. Since its completion, it has been available on the site enzo-caputo.eu (formerly enzo-caputo.com) and has been cited in many other works.

It stirred up considerable interest for its original interpretation. Sebregondi has always been read through the lens of his collaborators, who extolled his qualities of moral guidance in the period of post-war reconstruction and saw him as an educator concerned with the development of human resources and as a torch-bearer of inclusive and humanistic values in the approach to development, near to the Catholic Church’s ideas as expressed in the encyclical Populorum Progressio.

However, in this work, we recognize his original contribution to development studies, the foundations of which were laid down after the Second World War. His contributions to this field, although undervalued by Italian academics, were applied and tested in a few of the most successful Italian experiences in the field of international cooperation.

Curiously, five years after the publication of this essay in mimeo form, a work was published that presented Sebregondi as a pioneer of development studies in Italy, and also made reference to some of his most important contributions that we write about in this essay.

Therefore, I felt the need to publish this essay in a more formal way to make it more widely available, so that it can be put to proper use and serves to explain, in an analytical and well-argued way, the reasons why Giorgio Sebregondi could, and should be, considered as the father in Italy of the international discipline which, in the post-war years, became known as Development Studies.

2017 was the centenary of the birth of Giorgio Sebregondi. It was also the year that his wife, Fulvia Dubini, died. She was passionate about this publication and helped me not only in the documentation and discussion of its themes, but in the meticulous proofreading of the finished piece. Therefore, I thought it was appropriate to publish this essay and dedicate it to dear Fulvia, with the greatest affection.

Enzo Caputo

September 2020

INTRODUCTION

“It seems to me that there are two essential principles for properly defining a social development policy: the first is to reject the notion that development is restricted to economic development alone…; the second is that the development policy of a society must be designed as a policy of self-development for that society" [1956a, p. 277].

The aim of this paper is to examine Giorgio Sebregondi (GS)'s thinking from the point of view of his very original, and still surprisingly significant, contributions to the theory and practice of social development. This is a very specific point of view, which does not claim to take into account all the richness and complexity of his entire body of work, which has been done very well in the past. I am referring, in particular, to the publication by S. Santamaita [1998] and the collection of accounts and essays edited by Carlo Felice Casula [1990], with a passionate and illuminating introduction by Giuseppe De Rita. For this reason, the reference texts we have used the most are the two most comprehensive works on the subject:

• an article from 1950 “Considerazioni sulla Teoria delle Aree Depresse” (Observations on the Theory of Depressed Regions). This is a most structured piece of writing, rich in quotations and precise references, a sound basis for a systematic critique, at an international level, of the theories of economic development and related policies in the 1950s. The article develops the first principle referred to in the opening sentence of these observations: the integrity of the development process and the relevance of political-institutional factors for the success of economic projects.