When development meets culture: the contribution of Celso Furtado in the 1970s

1. Development economics and the idea of culture

Only a handful of authors in economics have engaged in theoretical endeavours as ambitious as the one that Celso Furtado undertook in the late 1970s. Although the outcome of his effort could be considered limited in comparison to the intent of his 1976 Prefácio a Nova Economia Política [Preface to a New Political Economy], the book contained both a sharp criticism of economic science and an audacious project to reconstruct the field’s conceptual framework, specifically, an attempt to redefine the field of development economics. Furtado criticized the field’s failure to explain and effectively change the socio-economic reality of underdeveloped nations; his methods expanded the scope of analysis, assigning culture a pivotal role in the dynamics of development and underdevelopment.

The addition of culture is not a novelty in itself, as connections between culture and economic dynamics have been pursued by various authors and from different perspectives at least since Weber (1905), particularly in relation to ethics and religion. More recently, this theme has been explored by Ruttan (1989) and Landes (1998) as the idea of cultural endowments.

Gerald M. Meier (2005) devotes a chapter of his book on the evolution of development economics to addressing these connections and exploring the role of national culture in producing differential rates of growth. This concept is used, for example, in the works of Hagen (1968), Hoselitz (1960) and McClelland (1961). At the same time, Meier emphasizes the difficulty of implementing a variable as broad and complex as culture. The main sense in which Meier considers culture as it relates to economic development is as a dimension of social capital, together with institutions and social capability. Meier highlights the role of these concepts in modern growth theory in comparison to works from the 1950s such as those of Arthur Lewis, insisting that ‘the link to development, however, should not be through a questionable appeal to “culture” but instead through the recognition of differences in the quantity and quality of “social capital”’ (Meier, 2005, p. 196).

What is of particular interest here is that Meier, in his history of the field of development economics, emphasizes the connection between culture and development in one chapter and lists Furtado as an early contributor to development economics in another. However, he fails to mention Furtado’s work in the 1970s in which culture is an important dimension by which to understand development and underdevelopment. Moreover, culture understood as a dimension of social capital differs significantly from Furtado’s perspective, which connects culture to the idea of creativity to analyse particular dynamics of the development process, as we will discuss below.

The subject of culture has been present since the origins of development economics, albeit with a distinct focus. For example, it is no coincidence that what is probably the first journal dedicated to development economics, founded by Bert F. Hoselitz in 1952 at the University of Chicago, was named Economic Development and Cultural Change. Since its establishment, the journal has been characterized by an interdisciplinary approach to the study of economic development.¹ It paid particular attention to anthropological themes and to the debates cultivated by Hoselitz at the University of Chicago, which represents one of the first efforts to effectively introduce non-economic factors into development economics.

It is certainly plausible to place Furtado close to this tradition, especially if one follows the trail of clues in his autobiographical essays (Furtado, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 191–98). For instance, he describes visits to research centres in the USA in 1951, which decisively contributed to the theory Furtado later proposed, as analysed by Boianovsky (2010). Meetings with Hoselitz and the anthropologist Melville Herskovitz, the author of pioneering works in the field of cultural change, are singled out. Furtado notes that Herskovitz bordered cultural determinism and privileged a synchronic (anthropological) stance rather than a diachronic (historical), which reveals Furtado’s flirtation with the anthropological literature. However, the Brazilian author considered historical analysis one of his most important analytical tools, and his contact with the anthropological literature on culture was very cautious.

Furtado provides another good example in describing in his autobiography the process of writing his first book (A Economia Brasileira, 1954). Therein, Furtado insists that ‘comprehension of the phenomenon of development required a wider focus on the process of cultural change, “the creative force of civilizations,”’ as the starting point of his considerations (Furtado, 1997, vol. 1, p. 285). In fact, in that book’s introduction (Furtado, 1954, p. 21), he highlighted the relevance of cultural change to development economics.

These passages clearly indicate the influence of Chicago on his views. The theme of cultural change is not found in his writing before that 1951 trip. The topic appears frequently in his subsequent texts, albeit without further theoretical development. Chapter 2 (‘Economic development in the process of cultural change’) of the book Dialética do Desenvolvimento [Dialectic of Development] (1964) is perhaps the best example of a direct reference to anthropological themes (Furtado, 1964, pp. 26–27).

However, the novelty of Furtado’s work in the 1970s is not associated with debates about cultural change. In fact, in his arguments, the relevance of culture is strongly linked with creativity on a rather different analytical level. In fact, the term ‘cultural change’ is used neither in Criatividade e Dependência na Civilização Industrial [Creativity and Dependency in Industrial Civilization] (1978)² nor in other works from the same period. Instead, Furtado focused on the theme of creativity, which allowed him to advance with renewed force the theme of dependency by repositioning the issue of technological dependence, as addressed by import substitution industrialization, in terms of wider cultural dependence.³

The emphasis on creativity, however, did not lead Furtado to a narrow concept of culture restricted to artistic creation. In his work, culture refers to a system of values, beliefs and perceptions, which should be the perspective considered throughout. To understand how culture enters the debate, it is important to situate the concept within the broader context of Furtado’s body of work. Furtado strove to explain why and how distinct economic structures formed in response to European economic expansion, some of which reached high levels of development but the vast majority of which remained in a persistent state of economic backwardness (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 11).

His initial explanation was formulated in the 1950s in his theory of underdevelopment. During this period, Furtado made lasting contributions to development economics, particularly through what became known as the historical-structural method. By analysing the process of industrialization in rich and poor nations, he showed that underdevelopment was not a stage through which a nation passed but a self-perpetuating condition. In doing so, Furtado distanced himself from both Marxist analysis and the view that economic growth proceeded through a series of well-defined stages. In addition, Furtado was the first author to associate the persistence of underdevelopment with high degrees of income concentration as both a cause and a consequence of the dual nature of economic structures that characterized these countries.

In the mid-1970s, Furtado engaged in a marked redefinition of his original propositions. In this revision, the blind reliance on industrialization, with all its internal contradictions, as the cure for underdevelopment is all but replaced by the central role of the context in which industrialization occurs. The evolution of Furtado’s theory of underdevelopment during this time was fuelled by a multitude of factors. It was partially related to the discrediting of development economics in general and of Latin American structuralism in particular. It was partly explained by the failure of Latin American industrialization to produce effective development. It was also his full-fledged contribution to the dependency debate to which he had contributed decades before, perhaps in reaction to criticism received from dependency authors in the late 1960s. Last but not least, like that of many authors, Furtado’s intense intellectual effort was motivated by the challenge posed by the rise of monetarism in Latin America.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse Furtado’s redefinition of his theoretical scope during the 1970s. Furthermore, Furtado’s contribution to development economics is similar in nature to the efforts undertaken in the early days of the field. Just as Furtado’s historical-structural analytical method broadened the horizons of economic theory to enable a fuller understanding of the economic divide between developed and developing countries, the introduction of the concepts of culture and creativity in the 1970s expanded the discipline’s horizons, allowing for a much broader view of the dynamics of underdeveloped economies.

In the mid-1970s, Furtado faced the challenge of theorizing about social formations, eventually producing an original interpretation of economic development as a broad historical process resulting in the diffusion of what he described as industrial civilization. He was particularly interested in understanding the relationship between the process of accumulation and the realm of values that govern social life, as well as their shifts in different societies over time. To accomplish these objectives, a return to classical political economy was required to allow the reconstruction of the conceptual framework within which economists operate. In addition, this reconstruction should be based on an overview of historically identified social structures (Mallorquin, 2005, pp. 263–64). Specifically, the theoretical boundary he was trying to overcome was the essentially static nature of economic analysis. In his view, economic problems are not detached from the overall social context. Hence, economic reality is always immersed in a broader temporal dynamic (Furtado, 1976, pp. 10–11).

The articulation of economics with history, however, produces additional challenges. From his perspective, the use of history to complement economics fails in most cases because the simplified modelling of economics incorporates historical reflection poorly. Hence, the effective incorporation of history into economics requires a theoretical redefinition of the conceptual framework of economics.

The theoretical contribution planned by Furtado did not include re-forging the field of economics. The author described his contribution as a mere preface to the work that remained to be written. This is the ambition and scope of Prefácio a Nova Economia Política (1976). It is appropriate to note, as does Mallorquin (2005), that even as a preface, the book’s theoretical proposition is itself a relevant contribution that helps us introduce different aspects of Furtado’s work in economic theory in general and in development economics in particular.

At its core, this effort reconsiders the economic theory of accumulation (and of social surplus) and the search for a global social theory. However, Furtado stressed that this broader theory should not be restricted to the pursuit of interdisciplinary studies. On the contrary, it meant the effective incorporation of a broader perspective into economic analysis. It is with this idea in mind that Furtado started a deliberate movement to open the field of economics to other social sciences, incorporating an original perspective on the theme of culture.

Culture, as defined by Furtado, is critical to understanding the issue with which he was concerned in the 1970s: the realization that capital accumulation and economic growth were unable to overcome the barriers created by a concentrated income distribution in the context of underdevelopment. On the contrary, the process tended to dynamically reproduce income inequality. The explanation for this recursive process presupposed an understanding of the dynamics of modernization of consumption through capital accumulation and the diffusion of industrial civilization. The role of culture appears as a fundamental connection to the historical dynamics of economic systems. Hence, this is a turning point in Furtado’s argumentation of the most general theme in his work: the production and reproduction of development and underdevelopment.

Of Furtado’s publications during this period, Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983) can be considered the main work. That book contains both the core and the later argumentation of the issues presented here; Furtado conducts a broad investigation of various areas of the social sciences and humanities with the goal of increasing the analytical scope of economics to explain the reproduction of underdevelopment (and dependency⁴) over the course of the worldwide expansion of industrial civilization.

Often mentioned in passing, the importance of culture and cultural dependence in Furtado’s work has been considered only recently. The most comprehensive appraisal of the role of culture in Furtado’s theory of underdevelopment was provided by Octavio Rodríguez ([2006] 2009), who analysed several of Furtado’s works, starting with those from the 1950s, with special attention to Accumulation and Development. In particular, Rodríguez highlights Furtado’s concept of industrial civilization and its high degree of abstraction, which functions as an ideal type against which the development processes of central and peripheral countries are compared to reveal the specificities of underdevelopment in the fashion of Furtado’s historical-structural method of analysis. Rodríguez also perceptively notes that Furtado’s cultural dependence and the ideology of progress present in accumulation and dependence are linked to the process of endogenous development proposed by Furtado in Cultura e Desenvolvimento em Época de Crise [Culture and Development in Times of Crisis] (1984).

However, Rodriguez’s intention is mainly didactic and concerned with the presentation of Furtado’s general theoretical contributions and of the interplay between development and cultural dependence, which imparts an unnatural impression of linearity to the process of development in Furtado’s work on the subject. Rodriguez’s exposition of Furtado’s view of culture resonates with Furtado’s own recollections, highlighting that the theme of culture, broadly defined, can also be found in Furtado’s earliest works (Rodríguez, [2006] 2009, p. 415). However, there is no inquiry into how early concern with development and cultural change yields a complex interplay among technological imitation, creativity and cultural dependence in the 1970s. In other words, there is no exploration of how cultural dependence became a ‘phenomenon of a higher order than underdevelopment’ in his theory (Furtado, 1974C, p. 9).

This paper is divided into five sections. Following this introduction, a brief presentation of Furtado’s intellectual trajectory provides a glimpse of his intellectual formation and career, highlighting the connection between analytical work and public action throughout his life. The next section focuses on Furtado’s specific contributions throughout the 1950s, the period during which he helped establish the canon of development economics. An analysis of Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983) follows. Finally, brief concluding remarks are presented.

2. Intellectual trajectory: permanences and redefinitions⁵

Born in northeastern Brazil on 26 July 1920, Furtado moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1939 to study at the University of Brazil. Furtado began his academic training at a time when the teaching of economics was still incipient in Brazil (Iglésias, 1981, p. 162). His first contact with economic analysis did not provide more than generic references to the main debates in Brazil at that time. However, as indicated in his publications from that time, exposure to themes in public administration shaped Furtado’s interests in the field of economics.⁶ In 1946, he moved to France to pursue further studies at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he was granted a scholarship and admitted to a doctoral programme in economics.⁷

Furtado returned to Brazil in August 1948, resuming his functions as a civil servant and joining the economic staff of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, early the following year, he moved to Santiago (Chile) to join the newly founded United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (best known by its Spanish acronym, CEPAL). In 1950, Raúl Prebisch, the Executive Secretary of CEPAL, nominated thirty-year-old Furtado to direct its Development Division. It was a moment of intense intellectual creativity during which Prebisch produced his most original work, including the keystone of Latin American structuralism, Problemas teóricos y prácticos del crecimiento económico [Theoretical and Practical Problems of Economic Growth], which is widely considered the most complete account of what would be known as CEPAL’s theories.⁸

At the time, Furtado’s intention was to work exclusively on his theoretical ideas of underdevelopment, having obtained authorization from Prebisch to visit research centres in the USA in 1951. There, he visited different universities and had contact with the work of de Vassili Leontieff, Walt Rostow, Melville Herskovits and Theodor Schultz, among others. This trip, in fact, fundamentally shaped Furtado’s theoretical trajectory (Furtado, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 191–201).⁹ The results of his reflections on development materialized in the following year with the publication ‘Formação de capital e desenvolvimento econômico’ [Capital Formation and Economic Development] in the Revista Brasileira de Economia. The paper was then translated and published in International Economic Papers and included, some years later, in the well-known volume edited by Agarwala and Singh (1958).¹⁰

Furtado would remain affiliated with CEPAL until 1958. Beyond the theoretical reflection undertaken during those years, he was in charge of several missions in Latin American countries. From 1953 to 1955, he lived in Rio de Janeiro as the head of a joint CEPAL/BNDE (Brazilian Development Bank) group, developing a supporting study and development programme for Brazil for the 1955–1962 period. During this period, he also promoted the creation of the Clube dos Economistas [Economists Club] and the Revista Econômica Brasileira [Brazilian Economic Journal], both based in Rio de Janeiro.

Bielschowsky (1995) identified Furtado as the most important name in what he called a development movement with nationalist tendencies.¹¹ In his evaluation, the influence and scope of Furtado’s work imparted a degree of cohesion to the economic thinking of policymakers engaged in the planning of Brazilian industrialization. In this sense, Furtado’s theoretical work throughout the 1950s was strongly associated with the practical appeal of transforming the Brazilian economy. Furtado was an effective leader among his country’s economists and a symbolic figure of Brazilian hopes for development during the 1950s (Bielschowsky, 1995, pp. 132–34). This is a key theme in the analysis of the evolution of Furtado’s thought, i.e. his deliberate combination of intellectual creativity with continuous transformative actions on economic issues.

In 1956, Furtado moved to Mexico City on a CEPAL mission. However, the next year, at Nicholas Kaldor’s invitation, he took a sabbatical to study at King’s College at the University of Cambridge. There, he wrote what would become his most popular book in Brazil (now in its 34^th edition, with approximately 350,000 copies sold) and would be translated into nine different languages: Formação econômica do Brasil [Economic Formation of Brazil], published in 1959.

At Cambridge, he attended seminars on themes of economic development, worked on his book, and engaged in academic debates with distinguished figures, such as Joan Robinson, James E. Meade and Richard Kahn, as well as rising stars, such as Piero Garegnani and Amartya Sen, in addition to Kaldor himself. As Furtado would later argue, this academic milieu ‘usefully vaccinated me against insidious forms of monetarism that sterilize contemporaneous economic thought, emptying it from all social concern’ (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 222, and vol. 1, pp. 327–59).¹²

In 1958, Furtado returned to Brazil and formally resigned from CEPAL and accepted the position of Director of the BNDE. Brazil was experiencing a period of intense political dynamism. President Juscelino Kubitschek chose Furtado to head the Working Group on the Development of the Northeast (GTDN in Portuguese), which was responsible for designing a development plan for the region. This effort resulted in the foundation the Superintendence for the Development of the Northeast (SUDENE in Portuguese), with Furtado as its first head. This prominent public life also led him to be named the first head of the Ministry of Planning in 1962.

However, his career trajectory was abruptly interrupted in March 1964 by the military coup that revoked his political rights for ten years. Furtado was compelled to flee his country. After spending time in Chile at the invitation of CEPAL’s Latin American Institute for Development Studies and moving to the USA to serve as the research director of the Center for Development Studies at Yale University, Furtado settled in Paris in 1965. There, he was the Chair of Economic Development in the Faculty of Law and Economics of the University of Paris (Sorbonne), a position he would hold for twenty years.

Throughout the 1970s, Furtado was a visiting professor at major universities, increasing his international travels and deepening his academic reflection. However, a key moment in his academic life was marked by his return to the University of Cambridge in 1973 as the Simón Bolívar Professor in Latin American Studies and as a Fellow of King’s College. During the next academic year, Furtado prepared two working papers (Furtado, 1974B and 1974C) and formulated the original argument presented in one of his most ingenious books, Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983).

After the political amnesty of 1979, Furtado travelled frequently to Brazil, increasing his involvement in national politics. After the end of military rule in 1985, he assumed the post of Brazilian Ambassador to the European Economic Community. From 1986 to 1988, he was Minister of Culture for the indirectly elected government of President José Sarney. In the following decade, he would take part in various international commissions, such as the World Commission on Culture and Development (established by UN and UNESCO). His intellectual work during these years remained connected to different aspects debated over the course of his career and in the writing of his memoirs. Furtado passed away in November 2004 at his home in Rio de Janeiro.

3. Underdevelopment and dependency: early contributions

Furtado was prolific in terms of both intellectual output and firsthand experience in shaping the economic development of Latin America. Cross-fertilization between these two fronts renders the analysis of his theoretical contributions to development economics inextricable from his biography.

Through an extensive body of work from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, Furtado left an indelible mark on a construction of a new branch of economic literature that sought to understand the realities of underdeveloped countries (Boianovsky, 2010). During a time of intellectual effervescence, Furtado joined Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, Arthur Lewis, Ragnar Nurkse, Albert Hirschman, Raul Prebish, Alexander Gerschenkron, Walt Rostow, Simon Kuznets, Paul Baran and Paul Singer, among others, in shaping what became the field of development economics.¹³ The many contributions of these authors were also at the core of the creation of an international institutional framework composed of the UN, CEPAL, IMF, IRDB and IEA, which greatly influenced actual processes of development throughout the world.

According to Bielschowsky (2006), Furtado’s contributions to Latin American structuralism can be broadly divided into three groups. The first is the addition of a historical perspective to the analysis of development processes in Latin America (Furtado, 1959, [1969] 1970). The second is the thesis that growing modern, urban sectors insufficiently absorb the large contingents of the population from backward, largely agricultural, activities. Hence, socio-economic inequality, or social heterogeneity, tends to persist despite industrialization.¹⁴ The third major contribution is found in Furtado’s work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Deeply rooted in the analysis of the Brazilian case, Furtado advances the debate regarding the relationship between underdevelopment and the income distribution (Furtado, 1966, 1968, 1972). The latter, by determining specific demand patterns, tends to straitjacket growth and, ultimately, development.¹⁵

Furtado also broke new ground by proposing a concept of dependency underlying the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries. This concept is associated with patterns of technological use and change in underdeveloped countries. In his view, burgeoning modern sectors are projections of developed economies in underdeveloped countries that create a dual structure whose development depends on imported—and ultimately inadequate—technology. This type of dependency also produces a series of shortcomings related to mismatches between new consumption patterns and local productive structures.

As will be observed later, the interplay among transplanted technologies from developed countries, the permanence of income inequality and the ensuing waves of the modernization of consumption patterns are at the heart of Furtado’s realization of the limits of industrialization in Latin America. This notion, we argue, ultimately led the author to venture beyond economic literature to shed light on the development/underdevelopment divide.

3.1 Development and underdevelopment

Furtado departs from criticism of standard economic theory and its failure to adequately explain the characteristics and processes underlying underdeveloped countries. In particular, he notes that by focusing on the distribution rather than the production side of the economics process, standard theory can dispense with a historical perspective.

At first, Furtado’s concept of development was similar to that of the pioneers of economic development and to that of CEPAL. At this point, development was equated with labour productivity gains associated with capital accumulation and the incorporation of new technologies through capital accumulation.

However, Furtado’s historical-structural analytical method rendered an otherwise standard definition for the period a much richer view of underdevelopment and of the process of development itself.¹⁶ Given that new production techniques are introduced within pre-existing economic structures, the main task of development theory becomes the analysis of the impacts of growing modern sectors and their repercussions in terms of productivity gains, distributive patterns and the use of social output.

Hence, beyond apparent similarities in definitions, Furtado’s emphasis on the process of capital accumulation has a clearer purpose. By studying the details of how industrialization takes place, he demonstrates that what is generally treated by the growing literature as a relatively homogeneous process—a process commonly equated with development itself—is, in and of itself, the origin of underdevelopment. According to Boianovsky (2010), in doing so, Furtado differentiated the sources of growth in developed and developing countries. In the latter, output and productivity growth stemmed from physical capital accumulation, whereas technological progress was the main driver in the former.

3.2 History and the genesis of the core-periphery system

Furtado then turned to historical analysis to explain how distinct economic structures arose from the waves of expansion of capitalism after the Industrial Revolution. The first wave consisted of the spillover of the new methods of production into Eastern Europe. The second wave saw such methods sprawling across colonies in temperate climates (New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Australia). Finally, in a process heavily dependent on international trade, the technologies created in the Industrial Revolution gained a foothold in relatively densely populated areas where pre-capitalist systems had already developed.

This distinction is crucial to Furtado’s concepts of development and underdevelopment, as the phases define the type and depth of the impact of new production techniques on a local economy. The difference between the economic structure of a country and the process of technology creation generates a hybrid structure in which modern and backward methods of production co-exist indefinitely.

According to Furtado, it is only in the Industrial Revolution that the process of development described by Lewis (1954) takes place. In its early stages, as new production techniques and forms of organization are created, growth is fuelled by the transference of labour from traditional to modern sectors. Hence, industrialization is accelerated by the typical mechanism of profit accumulation in the modern sectors. As the supply of labour becomes inelastic, a qualitative change takes place given that the labour supply constrains growth. A temporary solution is to shift excess production of capital goods to external markets. A permanent solution is to reconcile, over time, the production of capital goods itself with the factor endowments. This is achieved through technological change in the capital goods sector, which moves towards labour-saving techniques. Consequently, the economy’s capital to labour ratio increases further, upending the downward trend in profits through sustained productivity gains.

What is important to retain from the process described by Furtado is that technology advances gradually. Thus, for all the social conflict that may and has taken place, the process of technical change solves distributive pressures along the way. The central tenet of Furtado’s theory is that the process described above cannot be generalized and applied to underdeveloped countries, as occurs in Rostow’s (1952) stages of development and, to a certain extent, in Lewis’s model of development with an unlimited supply of labour.

According to Boianovsky (2010), Furtado’s approach is similar to Gerschenkron’s (1952) concept of relative backwardness. However, in Furtado’s construction, the specificities of late industrialization, i.e. the advancement of modern production methods over archaic social, institutional and economic structures, creates its own dynamics. Hence, contrary to Gerschenkron’s advantages of economic backwardness, what follows from Furtado’s chasm between development and underdevelopment is that the latter is a condition rather than a stage. The economic and social imbalances inherent to underdevelopment are self-perpetuating.

Furtado thus argues that economic theory must have a separate set of concepts to assess underdevelopment. As the productive methods of the Industrial Revolution reached and were disseminated across former colonial areas, the initial stimulus for industrialization is provided by foreign trade, which can set off a development process without the previous accumulation of capital. From this starting point, a new combination of factors of production is possible given imports of new technologies and machinery. The resulting rise in income is concentrated in the trading sector, which on the one hand, creates an increasing economic surplus that furthers the process of accumulation, but on the other hand, increases the level of income concentration.

The growth dynamics are thus unconventional in underdeveloped countries. In developed countries, which followed the processes described in phases one and two above, the productivity gains associated with capital accumulation result in a cumulative cycle of income, profits and wage (as demand increases) growth, which channels further resources into new investments. In underdeveloped countries, given that the growing income tends to be concentrated in the hands of a few groups, wages remain stagnant, and the process of capital accumulation subsides. Hence, the pace of development is connected to the functional division of income.

As Furtado clearly argued, ‘[t]he result has almost always been the formation of hybrid structures, part of which tended to behave as a capitalist system, and another to keep itself within the previous structure’ (Furtado, 1961, p. 180). The process of the creation of such hybrid or dual economies is associated with a specific international division of labour, which Prebisch (1950) defined as the core-periphery system. Rather than development proper, what takes place is a process of capital accumulation linked to the modernization of consumption patterns. The latter is a requirement, given that local production must find a market. In Furtado’s view, therein lies the main problem of development. Late industrialization is, by definition, conducted using imported production techniques that are inadequately matched to local factors of production. On the other hand, consumption patterns are structurally incompatible with local income levels. As a result, industrialization and modernization of consumption standards require increasing levels of income inequality (Furtado, 1974C). Furtado’s concept of a dual economy is associated with the coexistence of capitalist and pre-capitalist methods of production, as occurs in the context of underdevelopment. This implies the interdependence of modern and archaic, which perpetuates the dual nature of the system and preserves its backward characteristics. According to Furtado, the concept can be fully understood only in a system of international relations that include the phenomenon of dependency (Furtado, 1974B, p. 7).

3.3 Accumulation dynamics in the periphery

Notably, Furtado uses a concept of structural heterogeneity similar to that used within CEPAL. In the CEPAL view, the lasting coexistence of a small number of productive activities with a large number of low-productivity sectors is a defining characteristic of peripheral countries. Furtado starts from the same definition, showing how such structures formed in Latin American history. What is distinctive about Furtado’s contribution to development economics is that the structural heterogeneity associated with the productive structure, as described by Prebisch (1950) and others, is inextricably entangled with a high degree of social heterogeneity whose economic expression is steep income concentration.

The social heterogeneity observed in the periphery is instrumental in slowing the process of development even as industrialization accelerates. As the economy’s productivity and income levels rise, income concentration hinders the emergence of cumulative processes of growth because of equally high inequality in consumption patterns within the country. A large proportion of the population is effectively marginalized from the market economy, whereas a minority mimics the patterns of consumption in developed countries. Accordingly, local market growth is lower than the potential growth under the same rate of accumulation. The result is lower growth rates associated with persistent levels of socio-economic inequality (Furtado, 1974C, p.4).

The concept of social heterogeneity, together with the historical-structural analytical method, illustrated Furtado’s intellectual process and contribution to development economics in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, showing his unease both with the economic literature and with socio-economic reality, the author expanded the theory’s scope, searching for new perspectives outside economic theory.

Another stint at the University of Cambridge would alter the course of Furtado’s theoretical contributions. Two short discussion papers published by the Centre of Latin American Studies marked two major departures from development economics as understood in the literature.

In the first paper, Underdevelopment and Dependence: The Fundamental Connection, published in 1973, Furtado laid out the basic ideas that he would later explore in Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983), which will be discussed at length below. In that paper, Furtado argues that it is not possible to properly understand the dynamics of underdevelopment without examining the process of production, which is conducted using imported technology through import substitution industrialization, together with the process of circulation, which is dictated by expanding patterns of consumption that emulate those of rich countries. Thus, underdevelopment engenders a high degree of cultural dependence, which ‘is rooted in a persistent disparity between the level of consumption (eventually including part of the working class’ consumption) and the level of capital incorporated into the productive apparatus’ (p. 9).

The consequences of the dynamics described above for the field of development economics are far reaching and are explored in the second paper, The Myth of Economic Development and the Future of the Third World, which would be expanded upon and published in 1974 as a book of the same name. In this work, Furtado argues that economic development, viewed as the reproduction of the process of industrialization of rich countries throughout the underdeveloped world, is an illusion.

On the one hand, such a widespread process would be impossible given the natural resources required and the subsequent environmental impacts. On the other hand, Furtado argued that industrialization is, by nature, distinct in underdeveloped areas and thus incapable of providing the same gains in well-being: ‘to maintain the pattern of consumption of the rich minorities, diversifying industrial technology has to be geared to the most sophisticated processes in highly capitalized economies, notwithstanding the much lower level of capital accumulation of the peripheral country’ (p. 10). Hence, increasing social inequality, which is incompatible with development proper, is a feature of industrialization and tends to persist as long as matching consumption patterns between centre and periphery remained a necessary outcome of the process.

4. Creativity and dependency: technological dependence as cultural dependence

In Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983), Furtado explicitly connects the process of development proper and culture as part of a broader strategy of widening his view of the social context and its dynamics. From the perspective of Furtado’s economic theory, these connections are logical extensions of the processes he carefully described in Desenvolvimento e Subdesenvolvimento [Development and Underdevelopment] in 1961. In particular, the objective is to explore the consequences of the process of industrialization in the periphery, which extends beyond the productive side. Hence, true to his criticism of economic theory, Furtado establishes important connections between changes in production and changes, or lack thereof, in distribution.

It is in this context that the concept of dependency arises throughout Furtado’s work. On the supply side, its duality stems from the alien nature of the technology that is adopted in the process of industrialization by the periphery and from the reliance on increasingly expensive imports for further productivity gains. On the demand side, its duality stems from the income distribution and the associated consumption patterns that it ultimately enables.

Bresser-Pereira (2011) highlights a fundamental aspect of dependency theory that frequently escapes most analysts and allows for better differentiation of each author’s contribution. The central argument is that the term ‘dependency’, when applied to the periphery, is the counterpart of the term ‘imperialism’ in reference to the core. This leads imperialism to be equated with dependency in explanations of economic backwardness. The distinction proposed by Bresser-Pereira sets apart what he called the national-bourgeois interpretation and its broader idea of imperialism, which was common in Latin America in the 1950s and can be related to CEPAL’s structuralism, from the dependency theory that gained favour in the 1960s. The latter argues that economic backwardness is not exclusively caused by exploitation by the imperial core but by the inability of local elites to act according to national interests (Bresser-Pereira, 2011, p. 49).

This distinction is instrumental in placing Furtado’s own views of dependency within the broader field of dependency analysis in the 1960s. On many occasions, particularly in his autobiography, Furtado emphasized the theme of dependency since the 1950s. This is unequivocally stated in his writings in the 1970s with the overt objective of demonstrating the precedence of his propositions in the debate.

What certainly cannot be found in Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983) is any noticeable retort to the fierce criticism by Tavares and Serra (1971) of the stagnationist thesis proposed in Subdesenvolvimento e Estagnação na América Latina [Underdevelopment and Stagnation in Latin America] (1966). The issue at hand is complex and departs from the scope of our main argument, but two points need to be made. First, according to the detailed exposition by Coutinho (2015), Furtado’s argument on the matter is better known because of the version offered by Tavares and Serra than because of his own book. Second, and more importantly to the issues explored in this paper, Furtado lays bare the permanence of the original view of dependency and advances it substantially by interweaving technological dependence with the dynamics of creativity, thus creating a view of technological dependence as part of a wider cultural dependence.

What Furtado describes is a significantly more complex vicious cycle than that depicted by Kuznets (1958). The low rate of accumulation compatible with late industrialization is combined with persistent reliance on imports, lower rates of growth of employment and the need to emulate the consumption patterns of developed countries. Hence, the supply and demand sides of the economic system are inextricably linked to heterogeneous structures that also have inseparable social and economic characteristics.

In such a cycle, structural unemployment and income concentration are both instrumental and consequential. Given this dynamic, Furtado argues:

Dependency should be understood firstly as a set of structural features that are determined by historical circumstances: the form of entry into the international division of labour system will engender backwardness in the development of productive forces; industrialization promoted by modernization programmes will reinforce trends towards the concentration of income; the need to import certain techniques will facilitate control of economic activities by transnational enterprises. … The struggle against dependency is no more than the effort of the peripheral countries to change this structure. Since technology is the key resource and since it is also monopolized by central countries, dependence can be said, first and foremost, to be technological. (Furtado, [1978] 1983, pp. 7–8)

What is evident from this line of argumentation is that from a broader perspective, i.e. that of society as a whole, technological dependence means cultural dependence. Culture is a cumulative system from which chains of actions and reactions are initiated and have the potential to cause structural change. This process, in turn, is what Furtado calls ‘development proper’. It is linked to two processes of creativity. First, it has an essentially technical side, which he also labels ‘material culture’, composed of instruments that increase society’s capacity to act. Second, there is the effective use of such instruments, or non-material culture, in the form of social organizations, science, art, philosophy, music, religion, morality, customs and other forms of social heritage.

Furtado would argue that creative processes, which are always associated with cultural changes, imply further changes that ripple through the material and non-material sides. However, it is changes in non-material culture that are usually linked to social conflicts. It should be no surprise to the reader that Furtado argues that the process of industrialization in the periphery is not a process of development proper. This is because industrialization does not proceed to overcome technological dependence. On the contrary, it occurs as successive waves of expansion and diversification of consumption patterns. This process is viable only because the imitative pattern observed on the technical side is replicated on the consumption front, i.e. on the material culture side.

What can be observed from Furtado’s work in the late 1970s is the repetition of a pattern observed in the 1950s. Just as it seemed impossible for him to properly understand the divide between development and underdevelopment in the early years of development economics without referring to the broader historical process of the worldwide expansion of the Industrial Revolution—and to the peculiar forms of capitalism that began in the periphery—in the 1970s, it became impossible for Furtado to understand what he termed ‘cultural dependence’ and ‘creative processes’ from within the straitjacket of economic theory. Hence, in Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983), he undertook the daunting task of breaking open the doors of economic theory.

To understand the specific moment when culture became a fundamental analytical concept, we must distance ourselves from the general outline of Furtado’s theoretical work and assess its intellectual history, investigating the 1960s and 1970s in detail.

In Pioneers in Development. 2nd series (1987), Furtado analytically reconstructed his intellectual career in the field of development economics. The result was the identification of a linear path in which his original contributions to CEPAL’s structuralism in the 1950s led to dependency theory and to his original formulations in the field of culture.

Such an analysis may hold from Furtado’s perspective, particularly given that he remained faithful to his analytical method and devoted increasing amounts of effort to understanding many of the issues he had studied since the 1950s. However, a broader view of Furtado’s path in development economics does not exhibit this degree of linearity. Rather, together with the development of his previous ideas and concepts, the late 1970s produced a considerable theoretical reorientation of his work.

A view of Furtado’s work in the 1970s as a process of searching for new theoretical paths permits us to not only reassess the author’s original route but also reflect on his contributions to economic theory in the second half of the twentieth century. From this perspective, Furtado’s intellectual path is not one of a constantly progressing set of ideas and concepts but an intellectual struggle with the inability of mainstream economics to encompass all the issues involved, as well as their interrelations, in underdevelopment and development proper.

According to Furtado’s analytical reconstruction of his own contributions to development economics, a global picture derived from history, connected to the concept of a system of productive forces, has produced the so-called ‘structuralist’ approach (which is not directly related to the French structuralist school). It is the view that one cannot separate the study of economic phenomena from their historical contexts, which is particularly relevant to understanding (socially and technologically) heterogeneous economic systems, as in the case of underdeveloped countries.

In the story told by Furtado, he is a protagonist in the construction of dependency theory. However, strictly speaking, this theory became popular in the 1970s as a critique of the first generation of CEPAL structuralism. Furtado, addressing this issue in his 1987 autobiographical text, refers to a working paper written at Cambridge in 1973 (Furtado, 1974C) on the fundamental connection between underdevelopment and dependency. He states, ‘it was my studies on the dynamics of demand and modernization in the reproduction of underdevelopment that guided me to the idea of dependency, first cultural and then technological’ (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 39).

Furtado had already explored the importance of cultural factors in the process of development in previous works.¹⁷ He argues that it was thanks to such a comprehensive approach that it was possible to further the understanding of the linkage between external and internal forms of social domination. The phenomenon of dependency, except the features that had developed during the period of colonial domination, had been initially expressed in cultural terms through the transplantation of consumption patterns that could be adopted due to the surplus generated by static comparative advantage in foreign trade. It was this dynamism of the modernized part of the consumption structure that projected dependency in technological terms, inscribing it into the productive structure.

The adoption by periphery elites of the consumption patterns and ways of living engendered by industrialization in developed countries is correlated with the occurrence in the underdeveloped world of waves of industrialization and increases in income inequality. Economic growth thus tends to rely progressively on the capacity of the classes that capture the collective surplus to force the majority to accept increasing levels of socio-economic inequality. Furtado’s conclusion is sharp: only political will can change this picture.

The effort to rationally reconstruct his intellectual career results in the concomitant articulation of his theoretical efforts during the 1950s and 1960s with those of the 1970s. What emerges is an apparently cumulative body of work on a comprehensive theory of development and underdevelopment.

A detailed analysis of Furtado’s autobiographical writings provides another interpretation of this route. A key moment occurred during the period between April and September 1964 while Furtado stayed in Santiago (Chile) and was affiliated with the ILPES [Latin American Institute for Development Studies]. Upon returning to Chile, Furtado organized a weekly seminar with the intent of evaluating CEPAL’s legacy. Based on a shared concern regarding the loss of dynamism among Latin American economies, particularly among those that had made progress in industrialization, this seminar was responsible for some of the themes and critical bases of what would become known as dependency theory.¹⁸ Furtado devoted two sections of his memoirs to this period under the titles ‘A new reading of CEPAL’s texts’ and ‘From cultural to technological dependence’.

Undoubtedly, in this and others of Furtado’s work, there are enough elements to have a clear view of his importance in shaping the concept of dependency and his singular analysis of the issue of technological dependence. However, it also seems clear that the terms in which it could be expressed as a process of cultural dependence and its connection to the concept of creativity in a specific historical dynamic are issues that would take shape several years later. Nevertheless, he clearly suggests in his autobiography his leading position in the early debates on these subjects and his appreciation for an open exchange of ideas at that venue, with no one reserving certain ideas for their personal work:

For the very first time, a group of economists and sociologists was meeting to discuss the issue of development/underdevelopment taking as reference a series of theoretical texts elaborated in Latin America itself and collated with many of our real experiences. The experience was far from an academic seminar because nobody was engaged in personal games, marking cards, or preserving their supposedly original ideas for their own publications. (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 65)

The intellectual core of Furtado’s work completed between 1964, when he was cut off from Brazilian public life, and the beginning of the 1970s was effectively connected to the same theoretical core of development that he formulated in the 1950s, albeit at increasing levels of sophistication.¹⁹ Suffice it to say, his main book in this period is precisely his most solid on economic analysis: Teoria e política do desenvolvimento econômico [Theory and Policy of Economic Development] (1967), which was, at least in its first edition, directly connected to Desenvolvimento e Subdesenvolvimento [Development and Underdevelopment], published in 1961. Although it was more elaborate, Teoria e política do desenvolvimento econômico repeats and reproduces portions of Desenvolvimento e Subdesenvolvimento without advancing any content related to the theme of cultural dependency. Subsequent editions of the book published in the 1980s, however, incorporated those new ideas.²⁰

According to Szmrecsányi (2005), Furtado wrote three books on economic analysis (taken in the Schumpeterian sense), which help us demarcate the different stages of his career. They are Desenvolvimento e subdesenvolvimento (1961), Teoria e política do desenvolvimento econômico (1967) and Pequena introdução ao desenvolvimento—um enfoque interdisplinar [Short Introduction to Development—An Interdisciplinary Approach] (1980). Teoria e política do desenvolvimento econômico (1967) reassesses the core of Desenvolvimento e subdesenvolvimento (1961) with greater theoretical acuity and maturity but without expanding its scope. Pequena introdução ao desenvolvimento—um enfoque interdisplinar (1980), which would be revised in its third edition and published under the title Introdução ao desenvolvimento: enfoque histórico-estrutural [Introduction to Development: Historical-Structural Approach] (2000B), connects all the theoretical fronts opened at different times in his work in the same analysis. Finally, the cultural perspective assumes the foreground, as we observe in Furtado’s presentation of the third edition of the book:

The idea of development is at the centre of the worldview that prevails in our time. It is founded on the process of cultural invention that lets you see man as a transforming agent in the world. Give it as obvious that man interacts with the environment in an effort to reach his potential. On the basis of reflection on this theme is implicit a general theory of man, a philosophical anthropology. The failure of this theory often responds by the sliding to economic and sociological reductionism. ... The study of development, therefore, has as a central theme, cultural creativity and social morphogenesis, which remains largely untouched. (Furtado, 2000B, p. 7)

Another autobiographical text from 1973²¹ helps explain Furtado’s view on these issues before they had assumed a definitive form in his books. In the 1970s, Furtado had clearly perceived the limits of his theoretical framework and the necessity of a bold move to widen the analytical scope of economics. However, he could not yet articulate these limits. Despite this, he insists that his activity as a professor allowed him to search for answers to these questions. He faced the future with anticipation and confidence, assuming the mission of moving forward with his hypotheses, which at times revealed the narrowing of the discursive field of economics. His own words on the subject are revealing:

The military coup d’état in Brazil, in 1964, deprived me of my political rights and made it practically impossible for me to continue to work in my country, changing the course of my life. Having participated indirectly and directly for 15 years in the elaboration of policies, I am now convinced that our main weakness lies in the inadequacy of our theoretical analyses and our key ideas. As from the standpoint of a dependent subsystem it is very difficult to get a view of the system as a whole, one tends to follow the line of least resistance—that is to say, of ideological imitation. Alongside my teaching activities I continued to seek answers to the riddles of underdevelopment, from time to time putting forward new hypotheses around some questions: … The theory of growth that blossomed immediately after World War II became a conventional dynamization of macroeconomics models, following Keynesian or neoclassical lines, but inquiry into the reasons for backwardness is meaningful only in terms of the historical context, which demands a different theoretical approach. I believe that because of its nature, underdevelopment could not be explained by growth theories. (Furtado, [1973] 2000A, pp. 200–201)

Furtado’s second term at the University of Cambridge is symbolic of this theoretical turning point. The University of Cambridge occupies an important place in Furtado’s intellectual path. As mentioned above, it was there during the 1950s that he formulated his historical-structural analytical method in Formação Econômica do Brasil.

Upon his return in the 1970s, a new moment of intellectual ferment would come, leading to a sequence of original works: O mito do desenvolvimento econômico [The Myth of Economic Development] (1974A), Prefácio a nova economia política (1976), Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983) and Pequena introdução ao desenvolvimento—um enfoque interdisplinar (1980). At Cambridge, Furtado lectured on development in what ‘was, in reality, an exposition of ideas elaborated in the previous decade, which allowed me to insist on the specificity of underdevelopment and the need to depart from a global view of international relations and of the process of the propagation of technological progress’ (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 222). The course discussions would not, however, be the centrepiece of his work during this time: ‘most of my time I dedicated to participating in seminars related to themes that interested me, to discussing with colleagues the idea of the reconstruction of political economy, to rearranging my own ideas, to pushing my mind to decipher enigmas that had eluded me for some time’ (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 223). Furtado’s objective was to ‘elaborate a language common to the distinct branches of social sciences that was able to comprehend development as the realization of human potential’ (Furtado, 1997, vol. 3, p. 224).

Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983) was the culmination of this effort. Furtado’s intentions are clear in the preface, which is a warning of sorts to the reader:

The pages which follow are intended to be an academic anti-book. The problems are too broad to fit into the test-tubes of the social sciences—though this does not prevent them from appearing in more solemn tomes under guises suited to individual taste. The connecting thread is the author’s perplexity in the face of the shadowy world surrounding the tiny clearings in which the social sciences are conducted. It was this perplexity that led me to approach the same problem from a number of different problems. If the subject matter is imprecise and the methods inadequate, how can we hope to follow a straight path? (Furtado, [1978] 1983, p. iv)

The book contains eight chapters. The first chapter (‘Power and space in a global economy’) elaborates on how the process of expansion of the world economy in the third quarter of the twentieth century produces new questions for industrial civilization. These questions largely stem from the progressive shift of coordinating power in international economic relations from nation states to large transnational enterprises (Furtado, [1978] 1983, p. 23). This chapter also introduces a few examples of how interrelated forces among nation-states exacerbate the alarming distance between developed and underdeveloped countries in terms of labour productivity and pressure on the workforce.

According to Bosi (2008, p. 13), chapters two and three (‘The emergence and spread of industrial civilization: 1 and 2’) in the most recent edition of the book form its backbone. Bosi recommends a different reading strategy by combining these two chapters with chapter seven (‘A retrospective view’). In these three chapters, Furtado analyses, from a historical and structural perspective, the long-run process that results in industrial capitalism and in the hegemony of the European bourgeois. Undoubtedly, therein lies the nucleus of Furtado’s notion of industrial civilization. In addition, these chapters reveal how the diffusion of this type of society is not only the continuation of the same process that led to the industrialization of the Occident, as in some cases, the process resulted from the reactions of countries that saw their sovereignty or dominant geographical position threatened.

In chapter four, Furtado elaborates with a high degree of sophistication how the idea of progress gave way to that of development in underdeveloped countries. He also confronts the problem of industrialization in the context of dependency, which not only constitutes a historical stage of the process that would lead underdeveloped economies along the process of development but also provides no evidence that the same process would lead to stable social structures. It is plain that the main example of such a process, although there is no direct explicit reference, is the Brazilian case. Instead of stability, Furtado describes a scenario of increasing social heterogeneity with resulting urban marginalization and political instability, which creates space for ‘preventive’ authoritarianism. In this context, Furtado unveils the ideological traps that were particularly pertinent to his country at the time:

Thus, authoritarianism is less an instrument designed to foster rapid accumulation than a repressive weapon to be used against the social forces which dependent industrialization has failed to channel in constructive form. Since development is an expression of the capacity to create original solutions to the specific problems of a society, authoritarianism frustrates true development by blocking the social processes that foster creativity. (Furtado, [1978] 1983, p. 81)

From the fifth chapter onwards, Furtado reflects on the future of and possibilities for transforming the current reality. The keyword then becomes creativity, and the argument makes its way into the next chapter (‘Dependence in a unified world’), where the interrelation between cultural dependence and technological dependence is made clear.

After a retrospective analysis presented in the seventh chapter, Furtado concludes the book with a chapter (‘In search of a global view’) in which, amidst philosophical investigation driven by the question of human freedom, he sees myriad possibilities of resistance to the oppression imposed by the global expansion of industrial civilization. These possibilities take shape as social forms of organization and political activism that are themselves the most authentic manifestations of creativity. This chapter is the most unrestrained in an already unconventional book. As Bosi notes, Furtado remain faithful to ‘the task of writing an academic anti-book’. In the final pages, he ‘takes flight towards a horizon of a thought that dialogues with several philosophical, aesthetic and political strands, having as a common thread a single value, the creation of a society in which the potentialities of an individual and of his peers are continuously elevated’ (Bosi, 2008, p. 30).

Furtado’s intellectual journey and analytical formulations have many implications for economic theory and development economics. Several of his subsequent texts, such as the Pequena introdução ao desenvolvimento—um enfoque interdisplinar (1980), make explicit many of the connections between development and creativity in economic terms. However, it is not difficult to understand why work that is so overtly different from an economic theory has had a limited impact on economists and has remained among the least well known and studied of Furtado’s works.

5. Final remarks

The objective of this paper was to reassess the work of Celso Furtado, especially one of his least well-known works, Accumulation and Development ([1978] 1983). Our main argument was that despite the relatively limited attention paid to this book, in terms of the extent of the contribution to development economics, it is similar in nature to that undertaken in the 1950s. At the dawn of development economics, Furtado’s historical-structural analysis expanded the scope of economic theory, enabling him to show how the divide between, as well as the continuous reproduction of, development and underdevelopment was itself a product of the expansion of the Industrial Revolution. In the 1970s, as the discipline of development economics began its decline in mainstream economics, Furtado engaged in a second charge against what he perceived to be boundaries too narrow for economic theory to fully encompass the dynamics of development. Widening the horizons of the debate, Furtado introduced culture, and creativity in particular, as defining concepts of development proper and of the waves of modernization of consumption patterns associated with capital accumulation in the periphery.

In this sense, the research programme designed and followed by Furtado in the 1970s and thereafter represents an effective analytical rearrangement. Although there were indications of the importance of the theme of culture to the development process in his writings in the 1950s, this reflection was initially related to the idea of cultural change and was not actually prominent in his analysis. The resumption of reflection on culture, specifically in discussions of creativity, was related to the broader argument about technological dynamics and consumption patterns, effectively allowing important modifications to Furtado’s argument and providing a new analytical perspective.

Furtado’s reconstruction of his intellectual trajectory is fundamental to the investigation presented here. His autobiographical texts, written in different periods, make it possible to follow his doubts and uncertainty about certain theoretical aspects of his interpretation of development and underdevelopment as he endeavoured to reconstruct his intellectual career in a linear fashion.

The line of argumentation presented here follows from a close examination of Furtado’s path in the field of development economics, as well as of an analysis of his contributions to the field since the 1950s. Special attention was paid to the two periods that he spent at Cambridge as defining moments of his theoretical work and career. The analysis of his ideas since the 1950s, along with the consideration of his complete autobiographical works, enabled the identification of the specific moment at which culture and creativity were included as fundamental analytical concepts in his work.

Bibliography

Footnotes

Author notes