Sociology of Development

Dr. Anirban Mukherjee

Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology (RGIPT)
Jais, Amethi-229304
 Dependency theories
Criticized the market-oriented theories of global inequality.

Drew on Marxist ideas to reject the idea that underdevelopment

was the result of the countries cultural or institutional faults.

Low income countries suffer from exploitation in the hands of

wealthy countries and multinational corporations.

Continued from the colonial era.

Local businesses are unable to compete with the Western

companies.
 Dependency Theory
Dependency theory proposes that resources flow from a peripheral
nation to a core nation, enriching the latter at the expense of the
former.

The theory was developed in the 1960s to explain the lack of

development in Latin America.

Dependency theory rejected the view that underdeveloped countries

are merely primitive version of developed countries.

They posit that underdeveloped nations have unique features and

structures of their own.

Dependency theory is an outgrowth of Marxian thinking.

 Dependency Theory
Underdevelopment is the result of historical evolution of highly
unequal international capitalist system of rich and poor nations.

Industry in the periphery are controlled by foreigners although

sometimes in conjunction to the local interests.

Lumpenbourgeoisie-Used by Andre Gunder Frank (1972) to describe

the middle and the upper class who has little collective self awareness
and who supports the colonial masters.

Foreign colonial powers want to acquire resources and goods found in

colonies, and they find this facilitated with the incorporation of local
elites in the system, and they became intermediaries between the rich
colonial buyers and the poor local producers.
 Dependency Theory
The core nations perpetuate the dependency by giving foreign aid.

By giving aid, many donors have a strong say in the government.

Government designs policy that the donor agrees rather than what
people of the country desires.

False Paradigm-While many aid agencies and donor organizations from

developed nations offer what may be well-intentioned and what they
believe as helpful advice and actions, they do not have the right
perspective when dealing with issues of economic development in
LDCs.
 The Legacy of Colonialism
█ Colonialism: maintenance of political,
social, economic, and cultural dominance
over a people by a foreign power for an
extended period
█ Neocolonialism: continuing dependence
of former colonies on foreign countries
 The Legacy of Colonialism
█ Wallerstein’s world systems analysis: a
view of the global economic system as
one divided between certain industrialized
nations that control wealth and developing
countries that are controlled and exploited
– It is the most widely used version of
dependency theory: contends that
industrialized nations continue to exploit
developing countries for their own gain
 World Systems Theory
Capitalism has existed as a global economic system.

✓ a world market of goods and labor.

✓ the division of the population into different economic classes

✓ an international system of political relations

✓ the division of the world into three unequal economic zones,

with the wealthier zones exploiting the poorer ones.
 World Systems Analysis at the Beginning of
the 21st Century

Note: Figure shows only a partial listing of countries.

Analysis of Dependency Theory
Development and underdevelopment are essential
aspects of the same economic process, the former
occurs at the cost of the latter.

It can be termed as the See-Saw theory of development.

If one gets a larger size of the pie, the other has to settle
for smaller size.

The capitalist world system commenced when Western

nations developed trading links with non-Western
nations and gradually incorporated the rest of the
world into international system of exchange.
 Analysis of Dependency Theory
Semi-periphery-Semi-peripheral nations are partially exploited by the
centre and in turn exploit their own peripheries.

The transnational corporations are commonly regarded as the main

agents of neo-colonialism and is a vital mechanism for the transfer of
surplus from the peripheral nations to the core nations.

They are carriers of capitalism and have disastrous effect on the

development potential of the third world.

The only escape is to snap the ties with the capitalist centres.
Dependency theorists long for a combination of socialism and self-
reliance.
 Criticisms
It is problematic to consider the category of peripheral nations as one-
bloc. Similarly, all embracing categorization of core and semi-
peripheries is problematic.

It is not always that the external linkages cause underdevelopment.

Internal dynamics of a country may also result in underdevelopment.

Minimizes the role of social action, thus reducing human actors to

status of puppets, more or less blindly acting out the social roles
according to their positions in the world system.

The rise of Newly Industrialized Countries is difficult to explain from

the premises of this theory.