Development and Underdevelopment in the Third World: Theoretical Approaches

Abstract

<p>The aim of this thesis is to show that dependency theory, put forward by its proponents as a theoretical framework adequate to the problem of examining the dynamic of the process of development in the countries of the third world, while an advance on bourgeois formulations that preceeded it, remains problematical on the most fundamental of levels.</p> <p>The thesis argues, in fact, that dependency theory must be rejected as an analytical framework for the reason that it locates the crucial determinant of uneven levels of development in the realms of circulation and of exchange, and not at the level of production.</p> <p>It is my submission that dependency theory has been superceeded with the development of a perspective that has come to be known as the modes of production approach. Unlike dependency, the modes of production approach situates the problem of uneven development at the level of production, and not in the realm of circulation.</p> <p>The modes of production approach, the thesis argues, which theorizes the questions of deveiopment and underdevelopment, not in terms of the 'development of underdevelopment', a la dependency, but rather in terms of the articulation of the capitalist mode of production with non-, and primitive capitalist modes of production, thus remains an adequate theoretical perspective with which to address the question of the uneven levels of development which prevail on a world scale.</p>