Celso Furtado and development: an outline

Overview

This review essay focuses on the most crucial points in the evolution of Celso Furtado’s contribution to economic and political thought in relation to development, in the hope that a wider readership will appreciate the importance of his ideas to Latin America’s ‘development’ during the 1960s and 1970s, and perhaps even see value in reviving them. It opens with a description of the background to the rise of development economics, highlighting aspects of the discipline that this remarkable Brazilian economist confronted and transformed. This is followed by a description of his period as a development theorist or ‘reform monger’ (Hirschman 1963) and his subsequent exile (1964-1975). The article concludes with a discussion of some of the work produced on his return to Brazil.

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