Tracing the Land in Dependency and World-Systems Theories

Abstract

This chapter surveys central theories of underdevelopment—namely, the dependency, neocolonial, and world-systems schools. These ways of thinking, emerging from the national liberation and antisystemic struggles of the Third World, were central intellectual and political challenges to capitalist modernization and imperialism. They anatomized the structure of the world-system and dissected contemporary imperialist dynamics, in the process exploding the myths of modernization theory and orthodox Eurocentric Marxisms alike. The chapter first puts forward some central theorists and problematics, then surveys “anti-dependency” thinking from the periphery, in particular that focused on how to rupture from underdevelopment and neo-colonialism. It highlights thinkers focused on auto-centered development and delinking, including their technological components.