Showing papers on "Underdevelopment published in 1975"

The economics of industrial innovation

Abstract: Part 1 Rise of science-related technology: introduction evolutionary theory in economics and technical change process innovations materials innovations product and system innovation paradigm change. Part 2 Innovations and the firms: the microeconomics of innovation success and failure, the role of marketing and user-producer networks innovation, size of firm, economies of scale and scope uncertainty, project evaluation and finance of innovation, management strategy and theory of the firm. Part 3 Macroeconomics of innovation - science, technology and economic growth globalization and multinational corporations underdevelopment and catching up. Part 4 Innovation and public policies: market failure and aspects of public support for innovation technical change, employment and skills environmental issues technological assessment. Appendix: measurement and definitions.

The Political Economy of Rural Development in Latin America: An Interpretation

Abstract: The theory of unequal exchange between center and periphery is extended to provide an interpretation of rural underdevelopment in Latin America. It serves to explain both the causality of agricultural stagnation under dominance of the latifundio and the economic functionality of the subsistence sector where rural poverty is concentrated. The contradictions of the subsistence sector as a purveyor of cheap labor to the commercial sector of the economy imply population growth and ecological destruction that reinforce rural misery. This theory provides a framework to analyze the political economy of rural development programs. Land reform and small farmer rural development projects are discussed in this context.

Underdevelopment and Class Formation in Ovamboland, 1845–1915

Abstract: The Ovambo and their Nkhumbi neighbours live in a flood plain, which is artificially divided by the present frontier between Angola and Namibia. From the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, they underwent a process of underdevelopment and class formation linked to the evolution of commercial relations with western societies. Between 1845 and 1885 the ivory trade temporarily enriched the Ovambo and widened the productive base of their economy through the introduction of fire-arms. At the same time, however, fire-arms became a necessity, and thus forged permanent links of dependence on western societies. Cattle replaced ivory as an export item after the elephants had been shot out, but pressure on the Ovambo's own cattle resources were largely avoided by systematic raiding in southern Angola. After the turn of the century natural disasters and effective Portuguese resistance to raiding made this solution inoperative, and led to a general impoverishment of Ovambo society. The social impact of this impoverishment was extremely uneven, for the kings and their followers passed it on to the more vulnerable members of society through a system of harsh and arbitrary taxation. A new stratum of men without cattle was thus forced to turn to migrant labour in Namibia and Angola. The colonial conquest of 1915 froze this situation into a permanent system of recurrent labour migration.

Multinational corporations, taste transfer and underdevelopment: a case study from Kenya

Abstract: The multinational corporation (mnc) is the agency through which advanced technology is transferred to the underdeveloped countries. In the case of the soap industry in Kenya, mnc investment has resulted in increasing unemployment and regional inequality, has made little and possibly a negative contribution to the balance of payments, and has failed to make linkages with the local economy and especially its resources. In particular, the mnc, through its promotion of new ‘brand‐name products, transfers tastes from advanced to backward capitalism, thus reinforcing the process of inappropriate technology transfer. Nationalisation and a controlled industrial strategy are options not open to Kenya given the nature of its existing class structure, reinforced by the mncs and furthering their interest.

Beyond the Sociology of Development : Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa

Abstract: 1. Editor's Introduction: Beyond the Sociology of Development 2. A Critique of Latin American Theories of Dependency 3. The Dependency Economist as Grassroots Politician in the Caribbean 4. Andre Gunder Frank: An Introduction and Appreciation 5. Imbalance Between the Centre and Periphery and the 'Employment Crisis' in Kenya 6. African Peasants and Resistance to Change: A Reconsideration of Sociological Approaches 7. Rice, Politics and Development in Guyana 8. Rural Social Differentiation and Political Goals in Tanzania 9. The Gezira Scheme: Production of Cotton and the Reproduction of Underdevelopment 10. Economic Anthropology and the Sociology of Underdevelopment: 'Liberal' Anthropology and its French Critics 11. The Theory of Internal Colonialism: The South African Case 12. Structural Dependency, Modes of Production and Economic Brokerage in Rural Peru

Liberation, development, and rural nonformal education

Abstract: Nonformal education is compared to formal and informal education and viewed in relation to two explanatory frameworks from Latin America assessing underdevelopment. These frameworks, referred to as dependency-liberation and deprivation-development, also provide direction to nonformal education efforts, which the author argues generally are weak and ineffective as a primary means for promoting micro-level change. Evidence is provided to sustain integrated social change efforts where nonformal education is directed to the areas of social organization, technology, and ideology.

The Rise of a Female Professional Elite: The Case of Senegal

Abstract: Increasingly in the literature on underdevelopment, there is growing recognition of colonialism's pernicious effects on women's status in Africa, as elsewhere. Colonialism, it is argued, destroyed the traditional sex role balance both through underestimating and undermining women's economic role, as well as through the havoc colonialists raised in the social sphere by such varied means as forced labor and cash cropping (cf. Seidman, 1975; Diarra, 1971; Tinker, 1975). And yet there is a highly visible elite of African women—women well-traveled, usually professionally trained and/or university educated. If indeed colonialism did have such negative effects on women's status as are now being claimed, how then do we account for the rise of this female elite? On the basis of data gathered through interviews in Senegal during the autumn and winter of 1974, we will argue that these women are indeed exceptions, that elite women sampled came from highly privileged family backgrounds in which the father was already involved in the colonial order. We will also examine their motivations for acquiring higher education and professional training and their opinions on topics related to colonialism, development, and women's status. From this data we can then better evaluate both their evolution as an elite and their relationship to other women within the particular developing society. Dakar was chosen as a research site both for the availability of archival records from the colonial era and for its significant population of highly educated women. Dakar, as the former capital of French West Africa, was a center for education, with the Section des Sage Femmes of the Medical School (opened in 1922) and the Ecole Normole des Jeunes Filles at Rifisque (opened in 1938), both located within the greater urban area. These two schools served as the major secondary training schools for girls from all over French West Africa during the colonial era: their graduates were among the first women professionals, and many have since obtained high positions in many sectors of their societies.

Underdevelopment and the “Gap” Theory of International Conflict

Abstract: A common hypothesis about the sources of international conflict holds that war and turmoil will be an inevitable consequence of the widening “gap” between the developed and underdeveloped states. This view is based on a common Western image of underdeveloped countries which assumes that striving for economic betterment is universal in all underdeveloped countries, and is primarily a grass-roots phenomenon. This essay challenges the hypothesis and the assumptions upon which it is based. It argues that the images of underdevelopment generated by economists using aggregate data are in many cases incorrect or distorted. Studies by anthropologists which are based on micro- rather than macrodata produce quite different impressions of the underdeveloped society. The human costs involved are for the most part overlooked in development schemes, and the wholesale importation of Western economic development strategies has led in many cases not only to a poor allocation of resources, but also to many of the problems the developed societies are now facing, including urban congestion, rising crime rates, higher incidence of mental breakdown, and the like. The paper concludes with a critical review of common liberal solutions to development problems, and suggests that one strategy possible for some developing countries is increased isolation from the international system. International conflict may result not only because the underdeveloped states wish to close the “gap,” but because some may choose deliberately to reduce their dependency on the West. Conflict may be generated through isolation as well as through increased interaction.

Current Problems of Educational Development in Nigeria.

Abstract: Just as the physical and social development of the average child is beset with many problems, so the development of education in any given society is hampered by a variety of problems some of which are associated with the responsibility for and control of the society's education, the diversification of the educational system, the need to relate the schools' curricula to national man-power needs, and the society's economy. All these problems are retarding the pace of educational development in Nigeria today. The greatest problem of educational development all over the world is that of responsibility and control. In this exercise, the various agencies of education are actively involved, at times in unhealthy rivalry or competition, but the pattern of this rivalry or competition is often determined by the nature and problems of development itself. In this connection, Castle's ideas about underdevelopment and development speak with much relevance. He conceives of underdevelopment as a constellation of circumstances, physical, social and political, which contribute to the deprivation of the mind as well as the body. It involves the poverty that debilitates health, the ignorance and superstition which depress the human spirit, the conservatism that resists change, the social privileges which inhibit the fruition and proper use of talent and skill.1 He, therefore, defines development as "a situation wherein man himself becomes both the object and the subject of his own improvement, not merely an instrument in a process imposed from above and from without."2 It is therefore evident from these ideas that the conditions in the developing countries present great obstacles to development in all spheres of life, particularly in education.

European Capitalism's Reserve Army

Abstract: In For the Revision of the Party Program Lenin speaks of the "measureless and shameless" exploitation of foreign workers from less developed countries as "especially characteristic" of imperialism. Today some eleven million people from the underdeveloped nations of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean are living and working in the industrialized nations of Northwestern Europe, under conditions of measureless and shameless, if often discreetly veiled, exploitation. These foreign workers—"guest workers," to employ the charming German euphemism for them—have become a necessary element in the maintenance of the capitalist structure of industrialized Europe. At the same time, the workers' mass emigration has constituted for their homelands an enormous drain on limited resources, and has been a principal contribution in the Mediterranean countries to what Carlos Almeida has termed "the development of underdevelopment." In this and a following article I will examine some of the effects of this migration, first on the industrialized countries of Northwestern Europe, with special reference to the German Federal Republic, and then on the Mediterranean countries from which the millions have emigrated. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The political economy of discrimination and underdevelopment in Rhodesia, with special reference to African workers, 1940-73

Abstract: The study begins by examining the orthodox theory of discrimination as a possible model with which to evaluate the soolo-economic basis of race relations in Rhodesia. It is argued that it is inadequate because the theory is not grounded in the settler-colonial system, its historiography and the peripheral capitalist social formation in Rhodesia in which a complex articulation between modes of production Is found. A critique is then undertaken of the principal theories hitherto used to explain the course of Rhodesian economic development namely, dualism and those termed neo-marxist. It is argued that Barber's modification of the dualistic model of W. A. Lewis is deficient particularly because of the absence of a theory of 'primitive accumulation' and also the lack of an analysis of the political economy of the 'labour transfer', the basis of peripheral capitalist development. Arrighi's 'neo-maraist' analysis of Rhodesian development is also criticized for its inadequate theory of 'primitive accumulation' and the lack of attention paid to the labour mobilization process. An analytical alternative is proposed, based on an explanation of 'primitive capital accumulation' and the specific forms of-labour utilization found in Rhodesia in association with particular modes of production existent during the period under review. An attempt is made to specify these modes and the social relations related thereto. The labour structures found in the economic system are then examined in the context of the income distribution pattern, the class structure of the social formation and the primary 'dynamic' of Rhodesian postwar development industrialization. It is suggested that changes in labour policy in various modes of production were essentially concerned with ensuring the maintenance of a system of cheap labour whereby employers acquired labour-power below the cost of its own reproduction. The development of peripheral capitalism under conditions of settler colonialism required changes to labour policy. These modifications left the basic structures of the socio-economic system intact, although they gave rise to substantial pressures for change, e. g. from unions and African nationalism. The State has been particularly significant in containing these socioeconomic and political pressures, especially in the field of labour policy. An attempt is made to identify the changes in labour mobilization that have taken place, to assess their impact on the nature of discrimination and underdevelopment, and to point out some of the more important features of the class formation process that have resulted from the development of capitalism in Rhodesia.

Notes On Feudalism and Capitalism in Chile and Latin America

Abstract: Our review of Chilean history has shown that it was capitalism, with its internal contradictions itself which generated the underdevelopment of Chile and deter mined its forms; that this remains as true today as it was in the past; that Chile's underdevelopment cannot be attributed to the supposed partial survival of a feu dal structure, which never existed there in whole or in part (Frank, 1967:115).

The Internationalization of Capital and the Process of Underdevelopment. The Case of Black Africa

Abstract: 1. On the History of Foreign Penetration To assess the impact of foreign investment on the attempts of the young states in Tropical Africa to develop independently a material basis for a self-assertive policy, it is necessary to examine this problem in the context of the historical relations1 between metropolitan and peripheral states. The following question must then be asked: what new dynamics are multinational corporations as main agencies of foreign investment going to implant into these relations? The contemporary structures of underdevelopment have been built up during the century-old relations of dependency which expressed themselves in different forms. In premercantilist times the African continent had highly differentiated social formations and social organizations; the long distance trade played a decisive role in the process of social differentiation and accumulation of wealth. The existing intra-African slave trade, according to available analysis, did not induce the blockade of Africa's capacity for development that emerged together with mercantilist trade relations which totally changed the function of the slave trade. The mercantilist trade of the then dominant powers in Europe (Portugal, Spain, later England) was the main source for the accumulation of wealth that under specific conditions became a key factor in the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. Africa had been ascribed the role of the periphery in this phase: As the Americas had to supply Europe with precious minerals, especially gold and silver, and with specific agricultural products, so Africa had to supply the plantations and mining companies in the Americas with slaves as the necessary labor force. For that purpose, the well known triangular transatlantic trade was set up with all its devastating effects for Africa, that were: depopulation, prevention of productivity increases, and deformation of original cultures and societal structures. When capitalism in the center states eventually came into full shape during the various stages of the Industrial Revolution, the slave trade began to disappear. Its function in the framework of primitive accumulation of wealth had been fulfilled. England, in the forefront of capitalist industrialization built her 'informal Empire' by free trade (see e.g. Gallagher &c Robinson 1953). The period of capitalist monopolization within the centers led in Africa to full colonial conquest and penetration, whereas at the same time in the Americas already different features, including formal political sovereignty, had been emerging. During the colonial period, the artificially partitioned regions of Africa played different roles in the new structure of the international division of labor. In South and East Africa the entire native population was forced by means of 'enclosure acts' to provide the foreign mining company, which had discovered the mineral wealth (gold, diamonds and copper), with the necessary labour. The African social formations in that region were completely geared to functioning as labor reserves. In West Africa, where the slave trade had already shaped the social formations in such a way that even before political conquest production was set up for export to Europe, the typical structures of colonial trade came

Feldioara: the city comes to the peasant

Abstract: During the last several years, numerous studies of social change have focused on village communities around the world. Typically, these studies of "social change in village X" describe the process whereby an isolated, "traditional" agrarian community based on crosscutting (multiplex) social ties becomes a "modern" heterogenous, semi-industrial com? munity "integrated" within an international political and economic system. The upshot of this "rural revolution" (Halpern,1967) is the "inevitable" decrease of differences between life in the village and the cosmopolitan milieu of the town. Although a few scholars have ex? plained the "traditional" poverty of communi? ties in Asia, in Latin-America or the Mediter? ranean as being due not to their "isolation" from the world system (presumably being "progressively" rectified) but to their long contact with it ? thus Frank's "development of underdevelopment" ? the majority of anthropological studies have ignored this view [ 1 ]. Behind the social changes in "village X" are said to be the worldwide processes of "industrialization," "urbanization," and "modernization," the latter being ambiguously defined to include a complex of postwar changes as village and nation become increasing? ly "integrated." (See Tipps for a critique of "modernization" theory) [2]. Lately, anthro? pologists have extended their research scope to include not only people in the villages, but those who have left for the cities as well [3]. For most anthropologists, urbanization is equated with the migration of peasants to cities and the adaptations that take place among urban migrants [4]. Such studies make passing mention of how that complex of life ways called "urbanism" is "penetrating" the village in the spheres of communication (radios), transportation (bus routes), or educa? tion (literacy). Anthropologists interested in Europe have also begun studying a new class of "peasant-workers," along with the "urban values" that the commuter or migrant brings from the city. Some work has also been done on the phenomenon of rural industrialization in Latin America and in Europe [5], and articles have begun to appear concerning a specific form of rural development known as tourism [6]. Against this background, I will describe the "urbanization" of a Romanian village called Feldioara, located in'southern Transylvania in Romania. Urban development of Feldioara, however, differs in two significant ways from that in the studies I have mentioned. First, the Steven Sampson studies anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The Political Economy of African International Relations

Abstract: Our understanding of the international political economy of Africa is underdeveloped; we have inadequate data and theories about the development of underdevelopment on the continent. Even the orthodox study of international politics and foreign policy in Africa is largely a recent phenomenon, stimulated by the rise of new states in the last twenty years. This essay, then, can be no more than a review of the field and a lament over its deficiencies. In particular, we are concerned about: i) the relative inattention afforded the impact of international politics on the rate and direction of social change in African states; ii) the need for a new conceptual framework to advance our understanding of the linkage politics between African elites and external interests; and iii) the related growth and international inequalities on the continent. This essay proceeds therefore from a critical review of analyses of the international political economy of Africa to a tentative presentation of a new typology of states and regimes, regions and behavior, in Africa which reflects the importance of those variables on which students of political economy focus.

Overcoming Underdevelopment. A Research Paradigm

Abstract: 1. On the Genesis of Underdevelopment The evolution of the capitalist mode of production on a world scale entailed an unequal international division of labor. This pattern was set even before the industrial revolution and not only through economic means. Societies on the periphery became specialized, in accord with the interests of the metropolitan countries, in the production of export goods for the metropolitan markets. They constituted, at the same timr.e, an external market for the industrial production of the capitalist industrialized countries, which was of great importance for the breakthrough of the industrial revolution. As a consequence of this unequal specialization, the periphery had to import from the industrial capitalist nations: 1) the instruments for the improvement of the productivity of labor, 2) the products that would be required to satisfy any increase in consumption. Hence, in view of the only limited demand for the products of the periphery on the world market, its potential for consumption remained limited. In the capitalist industrial nations the productivity of labor increased due to the accumulation of capital in the productive sector production increased with the expansion of demand to include even the underprivileged masses. As a result, all economic sectors were incorporated in the capitalist economy. In the periphery, by contrast, the development of the capitalist mode of production remained limited to the export sector. This was due to the specialization in the products which constituted a declining share of total world c nsumption and to the impossibility of producing a broader assortment of goods domestically if mass buying power increased. The export sectors were, however, never isolated from the rest of the peripheral societies: they influence and dominate the precapitalist sectors. The coexistence of different modes of production in the periphery, and the consequent coexistence of different social structures, is the focus of the theory of 'structural heterogeneity'. The most important characteristic of structural heterogeneity is deformed reproduction. As a consequence of unequal specialization, markets for manufactured products developed primarily in the industrial nations due to the unequal development of money income. They also possessed competitive advantages by virtue of the infrastructure and educational system necessary for the production of industrial goods. Therefore, capital in manufacturing industry accumulated almost exclusively in the capitalist industrial nations. One consequence was the predominance of agricultural capital in the peripheral countries. To the extent that this agricultural capital was able to realize the surplus value from the labor of its workers and tenants as profit on the world market, this income was either hoarded or converted into unproductive luxury goods. At the same time, the pre-capitalist sectors disintegrated as a result of the importation of European goods and consumption patterns and the stagnation of local subsistence sectors. Since they were no longer able to sustain an expanding population, grow-