Dependency Theory
Dependency Theory is a perspective in social sciences that examines the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries. It suggests that the economic development of underdeveloped nations is hindered by their dependence on and exploitation by more powerful, developed nations. This theory emphasizes the unequal distribution of power and resources in the global economy, often attributing underdevelopment to the historical and ongoing exploitation by more powerful nations.
8 Key excerpts on "Dependency Theory"
- tavis d. jules, Robin Shields, Matthew A. M. Thomas, Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields, Matthew A. M. Thomas(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
...Dependency Theory argued that rather than being merely a question of a country’s stage of development along the universal continuum, a country’s development was shaped and constrained by the nature of its dependent relationship on “developed” capitalist economies. The result was that the operation of the global economy functioned to keep some countries in a permanent state of “underdevelopment.” In other words, the normal operation of the global system and world-economy meant that, for some countries, rather than facilitating development along Rostow’s (1959) universal stages, it worked to produce, maintain, and reproduce an impoverished form of dependent development, or underdevelopment. Dos Santos (1970) articulates this contradiction by observing that: we can understand what is happening in the underdeveloped countries only when we see that they develop within the framework of a process of dependent production and reproduction … the development of dependent capitalism reproduces the factors that prevent it from reaching a nationally and internationally advantageous situation; and it thus reproduces backwardness, misery, and social marginalization within its borders. —p. 235 Dependency Theory thus calls into question the foundational premise of conventional or mainstream development theory, that all nation-states could (and probably would, sooner or later) pass through a linear, staged, process of national economic development and modernization. Frank’s (1966) essay succinctly set out the critical argument that relations between countries located in the metropolis of the center, and those identified as satellite countries, were inherently unequal and exploitative...
eBook - ePubTheory in Social and Cultural Anthropology
An Encyclopedia
- R. Jon McGee, Richard L. Warms(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Nevertheless, several postmodernist and postdevelopment arguments accepted the Dependency Theory premise that the former colonial powers sought to keep developing countries poor and dependent, as Escobar acknowledged. Conclusion Dependency Theory offered an explanation for the development and underdevelopment of countries in the context of the rise of capitalism as a world system. It demonstrated that poverty and underdevelopment are rooted in history and political economy, where powerful nation-states and multinational corporations came to dominate and exploit less powerful nations and where the local elite in those underdeveloped countries profited from the exploitation of their own country’s people. Anthropologists, while critical of the external, hierarchical, and universalistic framework of both modernization and dependency theories, continue to utilize some of their insights in understanding social relations and processes in the local communities they study. Dependency Theory continues to guide understandings of development and global poverty, including issues of sweat shop and child labor practices, the resistance by African farmers to subsidized production in the North preventing fair competition, and peasant rebellions in Mexico and India against the impoverishment caused by global capitalism. Elliot Fratkin See also Marxist Anthropology ; Postmodernism ; Scheper-Hughes, Nancy ; Wallerstein, Immanuel ; Wolf, Eric ; World-Systems Theory Further Readings Amin, S. (1976). Unequal development: An essay on the social formations of peripheral capitalism. New York, NY : Monthly Review Press. Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and development in Latin America. Berkeley : University of California Press. Ferraro, V. (2008). Dependency Theory: An introduction. In G. Secondi (Ed.), The development economics reader (pp. 58 – 64). London, UK : Routledge. Frank, A...
eBook - ePubFrom Dependency To Development
Strategies To Overcome Underdevelopment And Inequality
- Heraldo Munoz, Heraldo Munoz(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
.... placing the dependent countries in a backward position exploited by the dominant countries. 36 It is important to stress that the process can be understood only by reference to its historical dimension and by focusing on the total network of social relations as they evolve in different contexts over time. For this reason dependence is characterized as "structural, historical and totalizing" or an "integral analysis of development." 37 It is meaningless to develop, as some social scientists have, a series of synchronic statistical indicators to establish relative levels of dependence or independence among different national units to test the "validity" of the model. 38 The unequal development of the world goes back to the sixteenth century with the formation of a capitalist world economy in which some countries in the center were able to specialize in industrial production of manufactured goods because the peripheral areas of the world which they colonized provided the necessary primary goods, agricultural and mineral, for consumption in the center. Contrary to some assumptions in economic theory the international division of labor did not lead to parallel development through comparative advantage. The center states gained at the expense of the periphery. But, just as significantly, the different functions of center and peripheral societies had a profound effect on the evolution of internal social and political structures. Those which evolved in the periphery reinforced economies with a narrow range of primary exports...
eBook - ePubMarxist Theories of Imperialism
A Critical Survey
- Tony Brewer(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The most widely discussed examples are in east Asia, though there are examples in southern Europe and elsewhere. By contrast, other parts of the Third World have grown very slowly, and in some cases per capita incomes have actually fallen substantially over decades. Growth of manufactured exports has been even more heavily concentrated into a few exceptionally successful places. To force these very different cases into the single category of ‘dependence’ is simply not helpful. It is slightly difficult to understand how Dependency Theory came to dominate radical thought in the way it did, given its visible weaknesses, and even harder to explain why Marxists accepted a framework of analysis so alien to the mainstream of Marxist thought. It can be argued (Harris 1986, ch. 7) that Dependency Theory, and related ideas, served the interests of the emerging middle classes of the Third World. Certainly, a system of thought which blamed all ills on foreigners, and legitimized state intervention to support domestic industry, was very convenient both for the personnel of the state apparatuses and for emerging industrial capital. Dependency Theory emerged at a time when classical Marxism was very weak, and had its roots in development economics, from which it inherited the concepts of national interests and national development. It has come to look like a blind alley, and attention has switched to examination of the differences in the internal structures of different ‘peripheral’ countries. 8.6 Summary Both Frank and Wallerstein identified capitalism with a network of exchange relations, on a world scale, that channel surplus from satellite (periphery) to metropolis (core). Both insisted that the internal structure and development of different parts of the world economy is primarily determined by their place in the whole, and that the organization of production at a lower level (enterprise, sector, nation state) is secondary...
eBook - ePubTheories of Development
Capitalism, Colonialism and Dependency
- Jorge Larrain(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...This means that some countries develop because others underdevelop, and that the latter underdevelop because the former develop. Here we can locate Frank’s theory which is genuinely dependentist, but also Wallerstein’s world system approach, and Emmanuel’s and Amin’s unequal exchange theories. On the other hand, we have a second group of approaches which, although accepting the conditioning influence of the capitalist world system, focus on capitalism as a mode of production or as an economic system which must be specifically and historically analysed within concrete social formations and national boundaries. They tend not to emphasize international market relations and transfer of resources through trade as the decisive basis of exploitation but look instead into the internal relations of production and class conflicts as the crucial elements which determine how external influences operate and are internally redefined. Here one can locate Palma’s two last strands plus Hinkelammert’s theory as three different versions. First, the structuralists like Pinto, Sunkel and Furtado emphasize the obstacles to national development and adhere to a rather humanitarian and moral conception which distinguishes a genuine process of development from a mere process of economic growth. Second, Hinkelammert’s theory of unbalanced peripheries rejects the confusion of peripheral situations with situations of underdevelopment and emphasizes technological dependence by drawing on Marxism and theories of economic space. Third, the Marxist-inspired approach of Cardoso and Faletto distinguishes concrete situations of dependency and various historical phases of it which depend on the integrated analysis of international conjunctures and internal class struggles of particular dependent countries or groups of countries...
eBook - ePub- David Harrison(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...3 Underdevelopment Theory Introduction Just as there is no single modernization theory, there is no one Marxist approach to development. Instead, there is a variety of approaches, originating in classical Marxism and leading to a broad-based ‘school’ of neo-Marxists, whose collective work has come to be known, at various times, as Dependency Theory, world systems theory and underdevelopment theory. Nevertheless, although these terms are often used synonymously, it is preferable to use ‘Dependency Theory’ to refer to the body of thought concerning ‘development’ which emanated from Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, and which was later to lead to a more general view of development, and its opposite, underdevelopment, as key features of the world capitalist system. Dependency Theory and world systems theory, despite considerable overlap, can then be seen as constituting underdevelopment theory, which is a reference to all neo-Marxist perspectives which, unlike classical Marxism, regard ‘underdevelopment’, and not ‘development’, as the direct result of the spread of international capitalism. This chapter is primarily concerned with underdevelopment theory but, as with modernization theory, it is necessary to say something about its historical antecedents. Underdevelopment theory (UDT) arose as much as a reaction to classical Marxism as from deeply held objections to modernization theory. Indeed, the growth of UDT has led to a bitter debate within Marxism, and it is no longer possible to make the rather simplistic claim that one is a Marxist and assume that people will know what is meant by the term. Certainly, one may be a Marxist, but of what kind? At the outset it is necessary to confront a particularly vexing problem. Some theorists insist that Marxism is able to encompass all the social sciences, including sociology, and thus that it is superior to all of them...
eBook - ePubThird World Cities In Global Perspective
The Political Economy Of Uneven Urbanization
- David O Smith(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In an introduction to a major compilation of studies, Michael Timberlake (1985: 10) succinctly summarized the shared premise of this research: Urbanization must be studied holistically—part of the logic of a larger process of socioeconomic development that encompasses it, and that entails systematic unevenness across regions of the world. The dependence relation is an important theoretical concept used to pry into ways in which the processes embodied in the world-system produce various manifestations of this unevenness, including divergent patterns of urbanization. Within the developing literature devoted to this approach, two distinct modes of analysis are apparent—arising from a methodological division among dependency/world-system analysts in general (for a more detailed analysis, see D. Smith, 1991). Quantitative Cross-National Analysis One strain of research on cities in the world-system particularly popular with U.S. trained sociologists stresses a comparative statistical analysis of urbanization and development. Scholars in this school are attempting to formulate hypothesis-testing procedures for the effects of dependency on patterns of urbanization. Specifically, dependency is expected to affect overall levels of urbanization, urban primacy, or “overurbanization,” through intermediary variables such as tertiary sector employment, state power, and so forth. In attempting to perform quantitative cross-national “tests” of dependency/world-system formulations, researchers are expanding on a groundswell of similar studies in the late 1970s. 4 These studies tried to assay the effect of international dependence, operationalized using measures of trade concentration or direct foreign investment and/or aid, on various indicators of national development. The first real attempt to relate dependency to patterns of urbanization using such a rigorous cross-national approach was offered by Timberlake (1979)...
eBook - ePubInternational Relations since 1945
East, West, North, South
- Geir Lundestad(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...14 Two Theories on Development and Under-development The Liberalist and the Structuralist Schools In this book we are interested in the relationship between states and blocs of states. That makes relations between North and South a major theme. A number of theories have been launched to explain these relations and the economic situation in the ‘developing countries.’ In this field there are nearly as many theories as there are authors. However, we can roughly identify two main schools, which in turn can be subdivided into numerous subgroups. While such diverse views would not normally be grouped together, the primary issue at hand here is economic relations between North and South, and on this subject the degree of concurrence is great enough to defend such a schematic division. The dominant school in the West has long been the liberalist or traditional school. Despite the great diversity of views within this school, its adherents all believe that in principle rich and poor countries alike benefit from international trade. The second school is called the structuralist, under-development, or dependency school...
