'The 20th century,' Charles Sabel remarks in his essay in the collection in honour of Albert Hirschman, 'has been a gigantic lesson in the transformability of theories, political programmes and institutions through their recombination in new contexts.' It is a revealing remark. For although most of what now goes on in the 'advanced' societies - in what since the Bandung Conference of 1955 have sometimes been thought of as the First and Second Worlds - has indeed turned out to be very different from what was once expected; and although there is now also an even more varied Third World; that's to say, although almost everything, event and context, has confounded expectation and will no doubt continue to do so - nevertheless the theories we have with which to understand, expect and direct it all are increasingly antique.

LRB 17 September 1987 | PDF Download