Chair: Michael Adas, Abraham E. Voorhees Professor of History, Rutgers State University of New Jersey

Panelists:
Darlene Rivas, Pepperdine University
“If Not for the Politicians:  The Vision of Panamanian and U.S. Agriculturalists in the Early Cold War”

Eve Buckley, University of Pennsylvania
“The TVA and Regional Planning in Brazil”

Bess Williamson, University of Delaware
“Small-Scale Technologies for the Developing World: Volunteers for International Technical Assistance, 1959-1971”

Commentator: John Krige, Kranzberg Professor, School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology

This panel brings together three papers on American technology projects in the developing world during the Cold War.  The first United States aid programs, from Harry Truman’s “Point IV” to the establishment of US AID in 1961, drew on the “modernization theory” developed by an influential cadre of social scientists who identified specific “stages” for economic and technological advancement.  Though modernization theory used American achievement in technology as a model, its formulators were economists and anthropologists, not engineers, physical scientists or other technical experts.

These papers examine the relationship between this social-science theory and the actual management and implementation of modernization.  What did modernization theory mean in practice?  What role did engineers and other technical professionals play in the policies and projects that sought to fulfill the myriad goals of international assistance, including humanitarian aid, economic development, and diplomacy? Each paper examines a different group working in the United States or the developing world during this time period.  In looking at agriculturalists in Panama in the earliest years of U.S. technical assistance, economists and engineers in Brazilian water management projects, and private-sector American engineers who worked independently on developing-world technologies, these scholars begin to fill in a larger picture of modernization as it engaged professionals outside of social science research institutes and policy committees.

The panel also raises some questions related to the fiftieth anniversary of SHOT. Though the organization does not explicitly feature in the research to be presented, modernization theory developed concurrently to SHOT’s first decades, and demonstrates a similar interest in tracing the roots of American technological achievement.

Panel organized by Bess Williamson, University of Delaware