It is with great sadness that we remember Osvaldo Sunkel, an influential economist and intellectual whose work helped shape development thinking in Latin America and beyond. A pioneer in the study of the environmental dimensions of development, he was also a kind and generous person.
As IDS senior Research Fellow, Anabel Marin has noted “many aspects of Osvaldo Sunkel’s work are still highly relevant today and continue to give suggestions for future research and policy”.
Osvaldo was a Professorial Fellow and later Research Associate at IDS between 1975 and 1986. He was invited to the Institute by its founding Director, Dudley Seers, with whom he shared many interests and ideas. At IDS, he led an important research project on trans-nationalisation in its economic, political and cultural dimensions. In many ways this project’s name and analysis preceded the later analysis of globalisation. Much of Osvaldo’s career was based at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and in the Universidad de Chile. He was also a visiting fellow in several other universities, both in Chile and abroad.
ECLAC has described Osvaldo as belonging to “a generation of economists and social scientists which made Latin American development not just an object of research, but also an intellectual commitment”. Working with a generation of distinguished economists like Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado, Jorge Ahumada and Anibal Pinto, Osvaldo made key contributions from the perspective that development problems had to be understood based on the history, the economic structures and specific features of developing countries, rather than based on the mechanical application of theories developed based on other realities.
Contributions
Osvaldo Sunkel’s work contributed in major ways to the thinking on development, both in Latin America and globally. From a structuralist perspective, he wrote influentially on inflation, dependency and transnational dynamics. His proposal of “development from inside” was a synthesis of a search for national productive transformation, based on national capacities for savings and investment, technological progress and increases of productivity, with the aim of advancing social inclusion. At the same time, he consistently examined how the global economic system shaped national development. His work on dependency combined analytical rigour with pragmatism.
He was also an early contributor to the environmental aspects of development, which still influences ECLAC and many others’ approach. Since the end of the decade of the 1980s he participated very actively in the debates that led to the creation of the neo-structuralist approach to development.
Osvaldo Sunkel was an original and creative thinker, integrating different dimensions of development economic, political and cultural, but above all an intellectual deeply committed to understanding, modifying and improving the Latin American reality. Osvaldo Sunkel’s research influenced many generations of economists and social scientists, not only in Latin America but worldwide. He was a prolific author of books and articles, that circulated widely, which helped disseminate his thinking. His books became a part of the bibliography in many courses in both Latin America and worldwide.
His time at IDS
His time at IDS helped bring his work to a wider English-speaking audience and made an important contribution to the Institute. Whilst Osvaldo was at IDS, I was privileged to co-author with him the book, “Debt and Development Crises in Latin America: The end of an Illusion”, published by Oxford University Press and then in Spanish and Portuguese. The book explored how the globalisation of finance and the substantial private lending to Latin American economies in the 1970s and early 1980s was a key factor in causing not only a major debt crisis in the region, and a lost decade to development in the 1980, but also led to a major shift in development strategy in the region, including a far greater emphasis on export-led growth.
Osvaldo Sunkel’s departure leaves an enormous gap, but his substantial body of work remains an important legacy. The continuing relevance of his contributions to development, thinking and policy is a testament to the depth of his analysis and his commitment to a more inclusive and sustainable future for Latin America.
Osvaldo Sunkel was not only a great and influential development economist, but also was a wonderful husband, father and grandfather, as well as a very kind and generous friend, colleague and teacher. He will be remembered with great respect and affection.