Updating Dependency

Development is a contested concept, with several categories and theories trying to describe how to balance the quality of life in a country representing in institutions, practice, values, and ways of life. (Matinussen, 1997 p. 56). This development is confronted with a multinational framework of institutions to maintain the global order between “high-income” and “medium-low income economies.” Despite the World Bank Group underestimate this category in recent years (Khokhar and Serajudddin, 2015) these continue as a real-world issue to describe the quality of life in each country.

But as Halperin remarks how development programs and institutions remain focusing in “ to increase the efficiency of their economies, the governmentimported advanced technologies from Western countries and borrowed from Western banks […] to pay for it” (2013, p.211–213). This situation is the main focus of dependency theories because is a degradative (environmentally explicit and politically implicit) relationship between nations. For this reasons, dependency theories are my favorite model.

Dependency theories consider a global context to describe the perspectives of development. (Willies, 2011 Ch. 3) In this way, make clear the imperialist tradition about core and peripheries around the economic system. World Bank and others international organization reproduce this perspective through indicators. (Davis, 2012). Also, Dependency theories have an non-Western origin, that is valuable to recognize others ways to understand economies and cultural practice. These approaches present a practical and visual perspective to illustrate flows human, economic and cultural capital, then others theories can’t perform visually. Some disadvantages of Dependency theories are the dualism, which in certain cases restrictive the interpretative character of these model in some situations. The Dependency theories could seem fixed to apply, in moments that core and periphery are mobile concepts. We need to consider this tradition starts in 1930 and continues growing until a mature stage of description in the 1970s. But nowadays the center of industrial production is located in China and Taiwan, more than Western economies as was in 1970. This emergent situation is difficult to catch for current Dependency theories. But, the mobilization paradigm (Shelter and Urry, 2016) could be useful to reinterpret the meaning and meaningful of Dependency theories in a post-development society.

References:

Davis, K. E., Kingsbury, B., & Merry, S. E. (2012). Indicators as a technology of global governance. Law & Society Review, 46(1), 71–104.

Halperin, S. (2013). Re-envisioning global development: a horizontal perspective (Vol. 4). Routledge.

Martinussen, J. (2004). Society, state, and market: A guide to competing theories of development. HSRC Publishers.

Khokhar, T. and U. Serajuddin (2015). Should we continue to use the term “developing world”? The Data Blog. Washington D.C., The World Bank Group

Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2016). Mobilizing the new mobilities paradigm. Applied Mobilities, 1(1), 10–25.

Willies, K. (2011) Theories and Practices of Development, Routledge.