Cosmopolitan Obligation: Australian Engagement with Issues of Aid and Development in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

In 1960, moving from a series of senior positions in government to the Australian National University, the Australian economist J. G. Crawford took a leading role in shaping official policies of international aid and assistance within the Australian bureaucracy, in association with national and international non-governmental agencies, and in raising awareness of underdevelopment among community-based groups within Australia. Contributing to the consolidation of development economics in Australia, he also navigated between an awareness that “in underdeveloped areas the choices are almost always difficult and often cruel” and a pragmatic approach to issues of hunger, overpopulation, social instability, political conflict and the technical interventions of the “green revolution”. This article works out from Crawford’s role to assess the institutional, social and cultural networks that supported aspects of Australian engagement with underdevelopment and aid through this period, and through this examination, it accounts for some of the distinctive features of Australian Cold War internationalism.