ABSTRACT
Reasoning in terms of international development has privileged economic growth as its major vehicle, frequently equating growth with social, economic, and political progress. This is a relatively recent phenomenon: Only in the course of the twentieth century did the concept of economic growth turn into a clear-cut and compact quantitative object of governance. Combined with Western-centric narratives of modernity, progress, and prosperity, models of growth presented a new way of interpreting the past and linking it to a manageable future for all social collectives. The chapter sketches the history of the rather tricky and heterogeneous relations between development reasoning, the economics of growth, and the global politics of productivity – entangled with imperial connections and their post-colonial legacies.
