This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author.

Colonial Development Studies? The British Social Sciences and Africa, 1940-1960

Gerald Hödl

Paper presented at Developing Africa: Development Discourse(s) in Late Colonialism. International Workshop, C3 – Centre for International Development, Vienna, 13-15 Jan 2011

Introduction

My motivation to explore the social sciences and their contribution to the emerging development discourse is mainly based on the widely held assumption that academic research has been playing a central role in shaping the objects of development discourse. In particular, it is the post-development critique that regards the social sciences as an integral part of the famous power-knowledge regime at the heart of developmentalism. Arturo Escobar, one of the foremost exponents of the post-development approach, regards development discourse characterized by “a politics of knowledge that allowed experts to classify problems and formulate policies, to pass judgment on entire social groups and forecast their future – to produce, in short, a regime of truth and norms about them.”1 My leading question therefore is: To what extent and in what ways did social science expertise contribute to development discourse? Was development during the 1940s regarded (and at the same time constituted) as an object of academic inquiry? And if so, what concept of development lay at the heart of relevant social science research? Thereby I was hoping to spot and to map the intellectual roots of contemporary development studies – not in the United States where many scholars locate the origins of development studies and/or development theory, but in the United Kingdom. It turned out that this search did not yield a very rich harvest – but sometimes a poor result can also be quite instructive, even if the insights may be located in a somewhat different sphere than the one I wanted to explore. I chose the 1940s as my starting point as they are widely regarded as the decade, when modern conceptions of development emerged in the academy. More importantly, it was during the 1940s that British social scientists (in line with international trends in the major Western countriesi2) for the first time received significant government funds in the name of

1 Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995). 2 Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, Open the Social Sciences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [distributor] 1996). This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author. development. Prior to that, public funding for research in the colonies went under different headings and it went almost exclusively to the natural sciences.3 The Development and Welfare Act of 1940 apportioned a maximum of £500.000 a year for “schemes for promoting research or enquiry likely to assist the development of the resources of any Colony or the welfare of its people”, as the Colonial Office explained explicitly in a memorandum and as it was implicitly laid down in the Development and Welfare Act.4 Although by far the largest part of this sum went to the natural sciences, a considerable part of it was set aside for the social sciences. During the two decades from 1941 to 1961 more than half of the more than 17 Million Pounds spent on research schemes went to agricultural, animal health, forestry and fishery research, whereas only less than 10 per cent were spent on social and economic research.5 So, the question is, which place did the social sciences occupy within the evolving structures of the colonial development drive? And which place was assigned to them by the government which provided the funds and how did the social sciences define their own role within that framework, within what we may call the colonial development dispositive?

The work of the Colonial Social Science and Research Council (CSSRC)

In the aftermath of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, from the early 1940s onwards, the Colonial Office established several advisory bodies which played a major part in the expanding research apparatus. One of these advisories bodies was the Social Science Research Council which had its first meeting in 1944. Like the other research councils it not only evaluated research proposals but also initiated research projects and supervised ongoing research. Although the CSSRC was only an advisory body, with very few exceptions its recommendations – especially concerning the granting of research funds – were accepted. It was not only a powerful institution; it was also a prestigious one, one that can be regarded as representative for the social science establishment of that period. No obscure academics sat on the CSSRC but a wide range of eminent scholars from the most prestigious British universities, among them its long-term chairman, the sociologist Alexander Carr-Saunders, Director of the London School of Economics, its first secretary, the anthropologist Raymond Firth, also LSE, the Professors of Education Frederick Clarke and Margaret Read, both from the University of London, and Margery Perham, Reader in Colonial Administration at Oxford. It is quite interesting to note that the social sciences as represented on the CSSRC

3 Cf. Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens: Ohio University Press 2007). 4 Colonial Office: Assistance towards Research Schemes from Funds Provided under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts. Memorandum by the Colonial Office (National Archives, CO 901/8, Colonial Social Science Research Council, 1949, Papers and Minutes). 5 David John Morgan, The Official History of Colonial Development, vol. 1: The Origins of British Aid Policy, 1924-1945 (London: Macmillan 1980),. p. 104. This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author. consisted not only of sociology and anthropology, demography, political science and education, but also of psychology, history, law and linguistics. Economics was a special case and was only partly integrated into the CSSRC; economic research was mainly directed by the Colonial Economic Research Committee, another of the Colonial Office’s advisory bodies. When I try to explore the position of the social sciences within colonial development discourse and within the colonial development dispositive, to a large extent my analysis is based on the minutes and papers of the CSSRC which cover the period from 1944 to 1960 – a huge and continuous stream of memoranda, research proposals, annual reports, most of them dealing with Africa and, to a smaller extent, with the West Indies. Other colonial territories were largely neglected. The Colonial Office had created the CSSRC – and it made quite clear what it expected from bringing the social sciences into the fold: It tried to confine the social sciences to an ancillary, yet very important role. They were supposed to provide essential data on which development projects – and in particular the development plans from the mid-1940s onwards – could be based.6 Carstairs, a senior official at the Colonial Office, in 1945 drew a direct line from the natural to the social sciences in producing relevant knowledge, the latter being seen as a variant of the former: “There are vast regions in the Colonies where there is […] insufficient knowledge of geology on which to base the soil surveys essential for large-scale agricultural planning, or the mapping of underground water resources which is often equally essential for the same purpose - let alone the exploitation of mineral resources. [...] Socio-economic studies have yet seriously to begin: they may be regarded as performing for the social structure of Colonial communities the functions performed on the material plane by topographical, geological and kindred studies. Developmentally, the choice between proceeding with or without relevant surveys is essentially a choice between light and darkness […].”7 And, he carried on with a somewhat surprising admission, "it must be recognised that in the prevailing absence of the bulk of the fundamental data required for sound planning, much of the purely developmental expenditure cannot fail to be misdirected and so wasted, together with the man-power diverted thereto. We must reconcile ourselves to a period of building upon sand, and to some extent of pouring money into the sand, but we should I think make it a primary object of policy probably for the duration of the C.D. & W. legislation to reduce this period of inevitable waste and disappointment by making a very serious effort to construct a solid framework of basic information by means of the survey techniques listed earlier."8

6 C.Y. Carstairs (1945), Colonial Development and Research (National Archives, CO 927/1/3 / Research Policy. Relation of Research to Development Plans). 7 C.Y. Carstairs (1945), The Place of Surveys in Colonial Development Plans (National Archives, CO 927/1/3 / Research Policy. Relation of Research to Development Plans). 8 Ibid. This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author.

Apparently, scientific knowledge was not only the light which was able to illuminate the darkness but also the cement able to transform the sand into a stable platform on which the natural resources and the productive capacities of the colonies could be developed. Being the secretary of the Colonial Research Committee, Carstairs may have overstated his case, but he circumscribed the position of the social sciences within the British colonial development dispositive, implicating a clear-cut division of labour: The social sciences (like the natural sciences) were charged with providing essential data on which government policies could be based – but they were not supposed to play any part in formulating these policies. So how did the social sciences (as represented in the CSSRC) meet the expectations by the Colonial Office and how did they embark on the government funded endeavour in doing research on the African continent? And let us not forget the terms under which the Colonial Development & Welfare funds were granted: The research should be “likely to assist the development of the resources of any Colony or the welfare of its people”.

From the start, the CSSRC conformed to the role it was assigned to by the Colonial Office. Raymond Firth, the then secretary of the CSSRC, stressed the “need for more basic data in all fields” (whose need?) and the anthropologist Audrey Richards underlined “the distinction between research and the making of policy” and suggested “that a beginning might be made by considering the types of statistics normally collected by governments in civilised countries”. What ranked highest on the CSSRC’s agenda was the “survey” (probably largely influenced by Lord Hailey’s “African Survey” which was published only a few years earlier). The CSSRC encouraged and supported surveys in virtually every field of human activity in the colonies: “Literacy surveys”, “land tenure surveys”, “ethnographic surveys”, “political surveys”, “general social and economic surveys” … and I could go on for another few minutes. The priorities of the CSSRC reflect a preoccupation with the almost indiscriminate accumulation of factual knowledge on colonial populations, with recording, counting, measuring. Some of these surveys (especially in urban areas) acknowledged the fact that there was social change in Africa (and the Caribbean), but many of them stood in the old ethnographic tradition which had the “tribe” with its supposedly primeval characteristics as its unit of analysis. Not everybody appreciated that attitude: In some accounts members of the CSSRC describe with some bemusement how non-scholars regarded their efforts. When Audrey Richards returned from East Africa where she had explored research needs, she complained: “Most Government officials I spoke to were more concerned over questions of organising social welfare, and training staff to carry it out, than they were in planning research. I was therefore unable to give as much time to the discussion of research problems as the situation This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author. really required.”9 Raymond Firth who undertook a similar tour of West Africa related his encounters with Africans. He acknowledged their “considerable interest in the work of the Council, and a general readiness to welcome proposals for research into social and economic conditions and problems” but did not fail to mention “the interest of the people in their immediate practical needs: they stressed their requirements in terms of schools, hospitals and dispensaries, improved water supplies, better transport and communication, higher prices for their produce, etc. The other theme came up constantly in the form of the question 'What is the motive behind all this research?'10 Research meant research by Europeans (or scholars from the Dominions and increasingly from the United States) following European standards and pursuing European objectives – Africans featured mainly as rather anonymous objects of research. If they featured as researchers at all, it was in a subordinate role, mainly as assistants in conducting surveys. Yet it was within the thinkable that Africans could gain full access to the academy, as a – very exceptional – quote by Raymond Firth shows: “the Council regard it as of prime importance to enlist the Colonial peoples for the study of their own institutions and the changes being brought about in them by modern developments. As far as the Council can see, however, it will be necessary for some time to come to draw the bulk of the research personnel from this country."11 Which by the way is not an unusual trope during the last decades of colonial rule: Promising equality but at the same time postponing it into the future.

If you look at the range of topics covered, from the gold of the Ashanti to mental illness among West Africans, then you get the impression that it was not development and welfare what was at stake but the interest of the respective discipline, a haphazard list without focus and sometimes quite obviously based on academic or personal networks. In between there were a small number of research projects with practical implications geared towards facilitating economic exploitation (labour mobility, delinquency, recruitment) but which hardly fit into an overarching developmentalist framework.

9 Audrey I. Richards, Social Research in East Africa. Report of a visit made by A. I. Richards, July 27th to September 16th, 1944, on the recommendation of the Colonial Research Committee (National Archives, CO 901/1, Colonial Social Science Research Council, 1944, Papers and Minutes). 10 Raymond Firth, Social Science in West Africa. A Report by the Secretary (National Archives, CO 901/2, Colonial Social Science Research Council, 1944, Papers and Minutes). 11 Colonial Social Science Research Council, First Report June 1944 - March 1945 (National Archives, CO 901/2, Colonial Social Science Research Council, 1944, Papers and Minutes). This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author.

Conclusion

In his paper Aram Ziai, following Escobar, points out the “subject position of the knowing and prescribing expert” as a main feature of development discourse12. In the period under scrutiny, only the first part of this assumption was to a certain extent true. There was a knowing expert (not regarding him/herself as a development expert), but there was no prescribing expert, at least as far as the universities were concerned. Whereas politicians and public servants had a clear understanding of what they meant by development (raising production and productivity in the colonies which increasingly included the human factor) and used the term frequently, it hardly featured in the statements by the members of the CSSRC and only in few of the research proposals and reports they processed. If they spoke of development they took the term for granted and did not spell out its meaning or even reflect on it.There was no ambition on the part of the scholars involved to guide, to stimulate, to direct, to control social change – just the desire to describe phenomena, to measure, to categorize them. In some cases, African social realities were regarded as static, in other cases as dynamic – but in none of the sources I was looking at did I find the desire to intervene nor the normative element which came to characterize development studies. “Development” as the central concept that increasingly guided and at the same time legitimated the policies in the colonies did not appear simultaneously in the political, administrative and academic sphere – it trickled down very slowly from the political arena to the academy (and definitely not the other way round). My findings are very preliminary. I have to admit that due to the huge amount of material I got stuck in the 1940s and can only make passing reference to the 1950s – contrary to my title which proved to be too optimistic; neither was I able by now to do a thorough investigation of the Economic Research Council (but they were also preoccupied with various surveys, as far as I can see) and of the academic output of the scholars involved. And there is another objection to my argument: In the very 1940s that saw this very cautious approach to research in the colonies there were social scientists in the UK who did theorize, who did prescribe – Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and William Arthur Lewis come to mind. And for the time being I cannot reconcile their attitude with that of their many colleagues who sat on the CSSRC.

12 Aram Ziai, „From Colonial to Post-colonial Discourse on Development: Questions of Method”. Paper presented at Developing Africa: Development Discourse(s) in Late Colonialism. International Workshop, C3 - Centre for International Development, Vienna, 13-15 January 2011. This is a draft paper and is not to be cited without written permission by the author.

Bibliography Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Open the Social Sciences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [distributor], 1996. Hodge, Joseph Morgan. Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Morgan, David John. The Official History of Colonial Development. Vol. 1: The Origins of British Aid Policy, 1924-1945. London: Macmillan, 1980.