Crossing Boundaries: Selected Writings

by Albert O. Hirschman

During the last half century, Albert O. Hirschman has redefined the scope and limits of political economy. His contributions, as both a scholar and an economic advisor, have definitively shaped an innovative program for social change and economic development.

Crossing Boundaries , a collection of Hirschman’s most recent writings, forges new and unforeseen connections between the past and the present, between intellectual life and lived experience. With astonishing frankness and humor, Hirschman recounts some of the most compelling and formative moments of his life that have influenced his thinking about economic and social development, democracy and capitalism. He also reconsiders the key terms of his scholarship ― concepts he is constantly rethinking, subverting, and reinventing.

Genres: Politics

112 pages, Hardcover

First published December 7, 1998

About the author

Albert Otto Hirschman was an economist and the author of several books on political economy and political ideology. His first major contribution was in the area of development economics. Here he emphasized the need for unbalanced growth. He argued that disequilibria should be encouraged to stimulate growth and help mobilize resources, because developing countries are short of decision making skills. Key to this was encouraging industries with many linkages to other firms.

His later work was in political economy and there he advanced two schemata. The first describes the three basic possible responses to decline in firms or polities (quitting, speaking up, staying quiet) in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The second describes the basic arguments made by conservatives (perversity, futility and jeopardy) in The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991).

Reviews

[Peyman Haghighattalab · Rating 3 out of 5]

راستش اول جذب معرفی پشت جلد کتاب شدم. خواندن زندگی اقتصاددانی که از مرزهای بین رشته ای رد می شد و به سایر حوزه های علوم انسانی هم وارد می شد و برمی گشت و بالاتر این که در زندگی خودش هم به شدت اهل سفر و گذر از مرزها بوده. یک جور هارمونی دوست داشتنی داشت انگار زندگی آلبرت هیرشمن. هم از درون هم از بیرون.
اقتصاد توسعه از آن حیطه های جذاب است, این که چه کار کنیم که یک ملت عقب افتاده یک جامعه ی مرده شروع به حرکت کند, در مسیر رشد و تعالی بیفتد... و آلبرت هیرشمن یکی از متخصصان این حوزه.
کتاب زندگی نامه ی خودنوشت نبود. پیاده شده ی یک مصاحبه در مورد زندگی و عقاید هیرشمن بود. به شدت مجاب شدم که سایر کتاب هایش و عقایدش را بخوانم. استعاره سازی هایش در بیان مسائل مختلف دوست داشتنی ترین ویژگی شخصیتی اش شد برای من...

[Niloofar · Rating 5 out of 5]

خواندن مصاحبه هایی از این دست، همیشه برایم خیره کننده است.

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume is so slim it may seem flimsy, but even these two short, 'lesser' essays and an autobiographical interview, all of which you will read in a short sitting, is still worth your attention, since this is very much quintessential Hirschman.