Citius, Altius, Fortius: A History of How the World Became Efficient

Abstract

The talk is derived from an early stage, multi-year book project that investigates the historical political economy of the idea of efficiency. The history and political economy of the spread of efficiency to distant corners of the globe is a grand saga that transcends the diffusion of material and sociological objects commonly associated with efficiency — the steam engine, the Ford assembly line, Weberian rational bureaucracies, scientific management, etc. Indeed, efficiency is the quintessential object of modernity, and the historical arc of its global diffusion coincides with the ebbs and flows of the story of how the world became modern. The talk will present the broad contours of this global history from 1780 to the present time.