By Arun Kumar and
In 1959, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations pledged seven million US$ to establish the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Ba帽os in the Philippines. They planted technologies originating in the US into the Philippines landscape, along with new institutions, infrastructures, and attitudes. Yet this intervention was far from unique, nor was it spectacular relative to other philanthropic 鈥榤issions鈥� from the 20th century.
How did philanthropic foundations come to wield such influence over how we think about and do development, despite being so far removed from the poor and their poverty in the Global South?
In a recent paper published in the journal , we suggest that metaphors – bridge, leapfrog, platform, satellite, interdigitate – are useful for thinking about the machinations of philanthropic foundations. In the Philippines, for example, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations were trying to bridge what they saw as a developmental lag. In endowing new scientific institutions such as IRRI that juxtaposed spaces of modernity and underdevelopment, they saw themselves bringing so-called third world countries into present鈥揹ay modernity from elsewhere by leapfrogging historical time. In so doing, they purposively bypassed actors that might otherwise have been central: such as post鈥揷olonial governments, trade unions, and peasantry, along with their respective interests and demands, while providing platforms for other – preferred – ideas, institutions, and interests to dominate.
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