RADICAL CRITIQUES : DEPENDENCY THEORIES

● Development ideas changed from domination to radical views.

● They questioned old ideas about how poor countries change or
develop.
● It looked at where these countries stand in the world's economy.
● Radicals said strategies like growth poles were wrong.
● Growth poles suggests that investing heavily in specific regions
boosts economic growth and spreads prosperity around.
● It called for a bigger view, considering society and politics for
development and not sorely money.

Radical critiques led to a Shift in policies to:

● Develop small market towns as rural growth centres
● Give more power or decentralise power to local areas for development.

The development of underdevelopment

Andre Gunder Frank’s spatial image of the ‘worlds capitalist system’
● Frank disagreed with the idea that poorer countries were stuck in an
old-fashioned, separate state.
● He said they're not behind; they've been part of the global trade
system for ages.
● Underdevelopment, he argued, isn't because they're cut off from
modern growth centers.
● Instead, it's because they're tangled in the big capitalist system.
● Poverty, according to him, isn't because they weren’t westernised; it's
because of how the world capitalist system works.

Gunder Frank’s Dependency Theory

● Frank sees the world as big cities (metropolises) controlling and
benefiting from smaller, dependent areas (satellites).
● Each big city has power over its smaller areas, controlling resources
and benefits.
● This system leads to using resources wrongly and not where they're
needed.
● Big cities take a lot of the extra money from smaller areas for
themselves.
● Frank says how much extra money a place has decides if it grows or
stays underdeveloped.
● Dependent countries in the big global money system have a hard time
growing because their extra money goes elsewhere.
● Poor countries and rural areas stay underdeveloped because they're
 ●

closely tied to this big global money system.

● Also, growth in big cities doesn't help the smaller areas much.

Hypotheses of dependency theory

● The world has its own "rich and poor" setup—rich places (metropolis)
and poorer ones (satellite) that are exploited.
Hypotheses:
● Big, powerful countries get richer; smaller, dependent ones stay
poorer.
● Underdeveloped ones get better when they're less tied to the powerful
ones.
● Today's poorest areas used to be closely connected to the powerful
ones in the past.

World capitalist system (refer to slides)

● World Metropolis -The USA (governing class).
● National and international Satellites (Leaders)
● Provincial or regional metropolises
● Provincial satellite Villages

Surplus value - Baran (1957)

● Actual Surplus = current net output - current consumption.

It's what's left after a country produces stuff minus what it needs for
itself.
● Potential Surplus = Maximum Production - Minimum Essential
Consumption.
This is what a country could make minus what it needs for basics.
● If a country stays on its own and doesn't spend extra on fancy things,
it can grow a lot.
● But if a country joins the world capitalist system, it won't grow as
much because the extra stuff it makes gets sent elsewhere.
● When the extra stuff is taken away, the poorer place doesn't grow well,
while the richer one grows more, making the rich-poor gap bigger at
all levels.

Colonialism and the spatial structure of underdevelopment

● Slater looks at how less progress happened in African countries during
colonial times.
● He shows how these ideas of being dependent played out in real
space.
● Sees colonialism as the formal means through which places like Latin
America, Africa, and Asia became part of the capitalist system.
● Basic Ideas / premises:
○ Colonies mainly traded with powerful countries they were

connected to.
 ○ Important positions in powerful countries were controlled by
foreign capital.
○ Companies in colonies, especially in mining and business, had a lot

of power.
● The colonial monetary system lets funds flow out of the colony.
● The colony trades farming stuff for industrial goods but doesn't get a
fair deal. This drains their extra money.
● Because of this, the colony can't save much money for itself.
● Joining the big money world made the colony less developed.

● Historical Phases Overview: Different times and how things

changed:
○ Before Colonization (Pre-colonial times)
○ Colonization Starts and Expands (1880-1914)
○ Colonization Organizes and Expands Further (1919-1950/60)
○ Post-Independence, Still Affected (1950/60-Onward)

Precolonial
● Boundaries were drawn which didn't match how people lived or traded
before colonial times.

Two phases of the process can be distinguished: The Initial phase and second
phase.
The Initial phase
● At the start, capitalism came in through plantations, settler estates,
and mines.
● They built railways mainly for these capitalist areas, not for everyone.
These places were middle spots for selling farm stuff or mining
materials.
● Places linked to these capitalist areas grew, but older indigenous
spots shrank.

The second phase

● Capitalism grew stronger where it started and expanded to new
places.
● New areas started growing crops for export, and more mines opened.
● They used railways before; now they focused on building roads to
control more areas.
● Each area had one main port for importing and exporting stuff.
● Even after getting independence, colonies still felt controlled like they
were under colonial rule.
● They tried to change things, like using growth poles, but the way
things were set up during colonial times stayed really fixed and didn't
change much.
Critique of the dependency theory
● Laclau criticized Gunder Frank for focusing on the market instead of
social classes, despite both calling for a socialist revolution based on
class.
● Some disagreed that a country's dependence on industries like mining
always leads to poverty or underdevelopment.
● Warren questioned why some countries, called Newly Industrialized
Countries (NICs), broke free from the cycle of underdevelopment
while others didn't.
● Critics said dependency theory didn't pay enough attention to how
women were affected or consider cultural aspects of domination,
focusing more on big global forces.