Racializing the classics of development economics: theoretical limits imposed on development theories by their racial perspectives

Abstract

The Eurocentric perspective of knowledge distorts the understanding of the phenomenon of development in all its complexity, preventing underdeveloped countries, on the periphery of capitalism, from identifying and solving their true problems or treating them in a partial and distorted way. The silence and lack of knowledge that prevail in economic sciences about the relationship between race and development, including in the field of Development Economics, show that racism, through Eurocentric epistemicide, can obstruct the ability to understand decisive aspects of reality even for those who sincerely want to transform it. We seek to answer the following question: does the dominant racial perspective in the field of classical Development Economics distort the understanding of decisive aspects of peripheral reality? The research addresses the racial perspective expressed in the economic thought of twenty-one classic texts on Development Economics, written by the Development Pioneers and other post-World War II authors who made development theories a specific field of economic science. The research is methodologically developed from a qualitative study that focuses on the History of Economic Thought. The main research instruments are the Bibliographic Review and Theoretical Discussion, having as theoretical foundation the peripheral thinking of authors from the Global South (a pre-determined set of bibliographic references extracted from the syllabi provided in the PPG-EPM pedagogical project) about of the relationship between race and development. (AU)