Creating Destinations for a Better Tomorrow: UN Development Aid for Cultural Tourism in the 1960s

Tourism is today considered as a crucial employment sector in many developing countries. In the growing field of historical tourism research, however, the relationships between tourism and development, and the role of international organizations, above all the UN, have been given little attention to date. My paper will illuminate how during the 1960s tourism first became the subject of UN policies and a praised solution for developing countries. Examples from expert consultancy missions in developing countries such as Ethiopia, India and Nepal will be contextualized within the more general debates and programme activities for heritage conservation and also the first UN development decade. Drawing on sources from the archives of UNESCO, as well as tourism promotion material, it will be possible to understand how tourism sectors in many so-called developing countries were shaped considerably by this international cooperation. Like in other areas of development aid, activities in tourism were grounded in scientific studies and based on statistical data and analysis by international experts. Examining this knowledge production is a telling exercise in understanding development histories colonial legacies under the umbrella of the UN during the 1960s and 1970s.

The UN Development Decades (1961-2000): Evolution of Appraisal Systems in the Context of Development Theories

The article explores the review and appraisal systems’ dynamics in the period from the First to the Fourth UN Development Decades in the context of the dominant developmental theories’ evolution. To reveal possible interrelations the author uses the methods of comparative assessment and periodization. The overview draws on analysis on resolutions and documents of the UN General Assembly adopted in 1960-2000, expert materials, academic research and international institutions’ reports. Development concepts which emerged in 1960-2000 had an undoubted influence on cooperation for development and the review and appraisal parameters. Developmental stages theory and modernization theory defined the priorities and parameters of the First Development Decade’s (1961-1970). In 1970s, growing economic interdependence, detente and the outcomes of the First Decade’s which showed that development could not be driven exclusively by modernization, industrialization and economic growth, determined emergence of the dependence theory and the alternative development concept. The new thinking was reflected in the provisions of the Second Development Decade. The Third Development Decade (1981-1990) provisions were built on a compromise between the dependence theory, modernization theory and the alternative development concept. For the first time concrete parameters of social development, eradication of poverty and inequality were specified. The Fourth Development Decade provisions revealed the influence of the neoliberalism in its “post-Washington consensus” reincarnation and the sustainable development concept. In the nineties the human development discourse put equality, wellbeing and freedom at the core of the development, bringing a new focus on the social and human development indicators.

High Modernism and the Development Decade

This chapter concerns the period of high modernism, when expansive ambitions of scientific progress promised new foods from a variety of fantastical sources, including algae grown on sewage, fungi grown on oil, and inedible leaves that could be boiled into protein curd. These projects encapsulated the vision of a cheap, efficient, mass-produced famine treatment that could finally end starvation. Beginning with Leaf Protein Concentrate, which emerged from postwar investigations into food shortage, high modernist hopes soon moved to less appetizing foods made from algae and junk fish, driven by an even more futuristic and top-down vision of life emerging from primordial sources. After this initial burst of enthusiasm came a different high modernist concept: the complete nutritional wonder-product, which was meant to offer a balanced meal in a simple powder or sachet. After generating great interest in aid agencies, this ideology began to go into decline by the early 1970s, limited by expense, complexity, and fundamental impracticality.

A New Deal for the New Frontier

This chapter studies the tumultuous period 1960–1964, focusing largely on developments in Washington, and incorporating analysis of Kennedy’s management of the Alliance and Lyndon Johnson’s tragic elevation to the presidency. In studying Johnson’s and Mann’s difficult relationships with Kennedy’s key Latin American aides, deep divisions within the administration are revealed that would have damaging consequences in the coming years. Long-simmering tensions would boil over following Mann’s appointment as head of Latin American policy, culminating in the creation of the “Mann Doctrine,” which critics of the administration claimed signaled the death of the Alliance. The clashes between New Frontier advocates of social-scientific theories of modernization and the New Deal liberalism of Johnson and Mann shed important new light on the planning and implementation of America’s “development decade.”