Gubser applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Their Future: A History of Ahistoricism in International Development, with the following results:
The ninety-ninth page of my new book Their Future: A History of Ahistoricism in International Development provides an interesting angle on the whole work, but I think it suggests that the book is more persistently theoretical than is in fact the case. It occurs early in the fourth chapter, which is entitled “The History Wars.” The chapter discusses two major mid-century development theories: modernization theory, which emerged in the United States, and structuralism, pioneered in Latin America. In particular, page 99 summarizes one of the most famous theories in the recent history of development: Walt Rostow’s Five Stages of Economic Development (1960). Drawing on the history of Western industrialization, Rostow argued that the evolution from traditional agrarian societies to the modern industrial ones always passed through the same five historical stages. Unless they were somehow stalled along the way (by, for example, a war or a communist takeover), all developing societies would follow the path blazed by the West and would eventually come to resemble the modern USA. Thus, while his five-stage model was a historical theory, it denied the value and relevance of actual historical experiences outside Europe and the US – and even Western history was radically simplified into a five-step schema. I call this approach historical ahistoricism – the use of an abstract history to deny the detail and variety of actual histories. The suppression of local history and experience is a central theme of my book. Rostow himself went on to advise John F. Kennedy and support the Vietnam War, partly in the name of modernization. And his modernization theory was revived and updated at the end of the Cold War by Francis Fukuyama in a famous article on the end of history.Learn more about Their Future at the Yale University Press website.
But Their Future discusses more than theories of development. It also examines development projects and practices in several countries and continents, most notably Guatemala, Zambia, and Bangladesh. So the page 99 focus on a key economic development theory accurately reflects parts of my analysis, but it misses the book’s geographic range as well as the many discussions of local projects and histories around the globe.
--Marshal Zeringue