Dependency Theory Key Terms Flashcards
Dependency Theory (Marxism)
Dependency theory evolved from the late 1960s from the work of Marxist academics, particularly those based in South America. This perspective maintains that global poverty and affluence are intimately connected. Both have been created by the systematic and total exploitation of the periphery nations by the core.
- One of the most significant contributors to dependency theory was Andre Gunder Frank (1967). Frank conducted a historical analysis, concluding that exploitative relationships had evolved through three distinct phases: Mercantile capitalism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
In a nutshell: Development and underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin.
Core/periphery Model
A view of the global economy which characterises divisions between a strong, stable core and a weak, vulnerable surround to that core. This model is adopted by dependency theory as a conception of world economies, where the core is seen as the industrial capitalist societies of the global north and at the periphery are those countries of the global south dependent upon and dominated by the countries of the core.
Metropolic Nations/core nations
Term used by dependency theorists to describe the developed world.
Satellite Nations (Periphery nations)
Term used by dependency theorists to describe the countries in the developing world. The term indicate their dependence on the core nations.
Primary economic activity
This is the sector of an economy making direct use of natural resources. This includes agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining.
This is contrasted with the secondary sector, producing manufactured goods and the tertiary sector, producing services. The primary sector is usually most important in less developed countries and typically less important in industrial countries.
‘Backwash Effect’
Where resources and wealth are sucked out of the periphery and into the core.
Underdevelopment
Term used by dependency theorists to describe the process whereby the core capitalist countries have distorted and manipulated the progress of less developed countries to their own advantage.
Though developing countries were often economically wealthy and culturally complex when they first had contact with the West, for centuries they have been pushed back, exploited, distorted, damaged, perhaps ruined.
Mercantile capitalism
Frank argues that exploitative relationships began to evolve some 700 years ago, when European merchant explorers, such as Columbus, set out to discover trade routes and encountered civilisations with sophisticated economies and cultures.
The incoming merchants ensured that trade occurred on terms which favoured them. Exploitation was often facilitated with outright threats of violence, using more advanced European military technologies.
During this time a number of informal trade networks were established, through which European capitalists generated massive profits. These informal exploitative relationships were formalised when, under colonialism, the european powers took direct control over the regions in the majority world.
Colonialism
A world system in which European countries controlled much of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This happened in gradual phases: Spain and Portugal’s conquests began in the 15th century and other European powers began acquiring colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries.
- The heyday of the colonial system was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the British, French, Dutch and until the First World War, Germans, held large empires in the southern hemisphere.
The main tactic used by the colonial powers was ‘divide and rule’, setting different elements within the colonised countries against each other. The drawing up of ‘national’ boundaries by the colonial powers, without heed to history, culture or language aided this policy. The legacy of this policy is said to be the tribal and ethnic *conflicts which still affect much of Africa and Asia.
Neo-colonialism
- Modern forms of exploitation of poorer societies by rich societies, which according to Dependency theorists are usually dressed up as beneficial e.g aid, trade and TNC investment.
- The 20th C saw a rapid process of decolonisation as Europe pulled out of its colonies. Dependency theorists argue that this ‘post-colonial’ world merely created the illusion that exploitation had been removed. In reality, all the mechanisms of exploitation remained, and nation states were replaced by TNCs as exploitative powers. Dependency theorists therefore describe the contemporary era as neo-colonial rather than post-colonial, to emphasise the continuity of exploitative relationships.
‘Scramble for Africa’
A term used to describe the colonisation of Africa in the 19th century. When European rulers suddenly decided to take over Africa’s hinterland at the end of the 19th century, they did not want any unseemly fights in front of the natives. This might give the idea that the white man was vulnerable. Better to share out the continent ambicably and convince Africans that whites were their new masters.
So the whites sat down at a meeting in Berlin in 1884 and agreed to carve up Africa by drawing lines on the maps. In some areas white explorers had not even set foot on the ground where they now drew borders. Ethnic groups, local identities and even natural borders such as rivers and mountains were ignored as the mapmakers guessed where watershed lay between river sources. The imperial powers then sent in their frontier forces to crush resistance and establish their rule. Africa’s natural resources were used to fuel industrialisation in Europe.
Cash crops
Crops grown to sell rather than to use.
Divide and rule/ conflict
Divide and rule (or divide and conquer) is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. the concept refers to a strategy that breaks up existing power structures and prevents smaller power groups from linking up. The divide and conquer strategy was used by foreign countries in Africa during the colonial and post-colonial period.
Germany and Belgium ruled Rwanda and Burundi in a colonial capacity. Germany used the strategy of divide and conquer by placing members of the already dominant Tutsi minority in positions of power. when Belgium took over colonial rule in 1916, the tutsi and Hutu groups were rearranged according to race instead of occupation. Belgium defined ‘Tutsi’ as anyone with more than ten cows or a long nose, while ‘Hutu’ meant someone with less than ten cows and a broad nose. The socioeconomic divide between Tutsi’s and Hutu’s continued after independence and was a major factor in the Rwandan Genocide.
The slave triangle
In the 18th century perhaps 6 million Africans were taken to the Americas as slaves, at least a third of them in British ships. For the British slave traders it was a three legged journey called the ‘triangular trade’.
- Taking goods such as guns and brandy, in exchange for slaves.
- The taking slaves on the ‘middle passage’ across the Atlantic to sell in Caribbean and North America
- Finally taking a cargo of rum and sugar back to sell in England.
Eugenics
The social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization, based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society. This pseudo-science was used to legitimate colonialism with the racialist idea that Europeans were more highly evolved than those they ruled over.
