Małgorzata Mazurek, ‘Economics of Hereness: The Polish Origins of Global Developmentalism 1918-1968’

This talk will address the east-central European origins of development concepts that came to dominate the postwar world. Treating social science as a situated phenomenon, shaped by the twentieth century’s violent politics, Malgorzata Mazurek aims to explain why and how developmental thought became the key instrument of defining, building and contesting new nation-states in Europe after World War I—and then globally after World War II. At the core of her discussion is a close-knit group of Polish economists, mostly Jewish. Dubbed “Polish Keynesians,” these activist scholars developed a way of a transforming a small, poor, multiethnic state into a self-expanding economy, and thus an ethnically inclusive polity.

Małgorzata Mazurek is an associate professor of Polish studies at Columbia University. She specializes in modern history of Poland and East Central Europe. Her research interests include history of social sciences, international development, social history of labor and consumption in the twentieth-century Poland and Polish-Jewish relations. Her book, Society in Waiting Lines: On Experiences of Shortages in Postwar Poland (Warsaw: Trio 2010; in Polish) was shortlisted among the ten best books on contemporary Polish history.

This talk is made possible by a University Studies Grant from the International Visegrad Fund.