Dependency theory prescription: break away from the core and base development on your own needs.

Import substitution industrialization - High tariffs protect nascent industries.

Orthodox and Dependency theories are both based on modernization.


Development is a process where there is a balance between the roles of the state, the market, and civil institutions.


1990's - Return to neo-liberal policies.

World economy becomes increasingly globalized and integrated. Role of the state is diminished through privitization. Markets are opened to the world economy.


Conglomerate economies:
companies that have diversified into various economic activities, usually through a process of mergers and acquisitions.

Through forward and backward linkages, companies may control all parts of a production process happening worldwide.


Export processing zones:
small areas within which especially favorable investment and trading conditions are created by governments in order to attract export-oriented industries.

Development as discourse:

Discourse: "A specific series of representations, practices and performances through which meanings are produced, connected into networks and legitimized."

"There are many different definitions of discourse, but what is important about this (admittedly loose) version is as follows:
(a) The embeddedness of discourse. Discourses are not free-floating, independent constructions, but are materially implicated in the conduct of day-to-day life where they have substantial, constitutive effects . . .
(b) The naturalizing function of discourse. Discourses shape the contours of the TAKEN-FOR-GRANTED WORLD: they 'naturalize' and often implicitly universalize a particular view of the world and position subjects within it . . .
(c) The situated character of discourse. Discourses always provide partial, situated knowledges: as such they are characterized by particular constellations of POWER and knowledge and are always open to contestation and negotiation . . . "

(Johnston 2000 pp180-181)


What was the stated goal of the G8 summit held recently in Genoa Italy? - "Alleviation of poverty."

World map of GNP - Where did all these poor people come from?


"Statistics tell stories. They are techno-representations endowed with complex political and cultural histories. Within the politics of representation of the Third World, statistic such as these function to entrench the development discourse, often regardless of the political aim of those displaying them . . . reproduces the tale of populations in need of development and aid." (Escobar 1995 pp.212-214)

Critiques of economic development: GNP/GDP don't account for everything.

GNP/GDP omit:
social reproduction - housework, childcare, subsistence agriculture
social and environmental consequences of growth - alienation, pollution
cultural aspects of development - alternative aspirations


Alternatives to development call for sensitivity to diversity, agency, local initiatives, heterogeneity.

Alternative development should be carried out by local social movements, people's organizations, and NGOs rooted in subaltern knowledge, local forms of practice and alternative forms of livelihood.

sources:

Escobar, Arturo 1995 Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World Princeton: Princeton U. Press
Johnston, RJ. 2000 Dictionary of Human Geography Oxford, UK: Blackwell Press