Knowing Jim Grant for Four Decades: an appreciation

摘要

Jim Grant was neither a radical nor a bloody revolutionary, yet he shook the development system, through a set of ideas, which evolved over a period of time. He conducted an intellectual guerrilla action from within the system. The ideas he advocated were not based on a priori theorizing or on a rigid ideological orientation. They were based on the lessons continuously learned from the ground, during much of his career, which was in Asia or was focused on Asia. I first met Jim in the mid-1950s, when he assumed duties as Director of the US Aid Bureau in Sri Lanka. It was the beginning of not only a close friendship — which lasted until his death four decades later — but was also an intellectual quest.