Showing papers on "Underdevelopment published in 1977"

Ecology and history: the example of Eastern Zambia

Abstract: The dual impact of expanding capitalism and colonial administration upon eastern Zambian society after 1895 resulted in a major ecological catastrophe in the area during the first half of this century. By the end of the colonial era, the people dwelling in some of the most fertile and hospitable land in the country were impoverished and disease-ridden. The land had been rendered barren and desolate, and the finely balanced relationship between man and his environment that had existed in the area prior to the mid-nineteenth century was undermined, involving it in a process of underdevelopment still unreversed today. Although certain scholars have described the ecological degradation of eastern Zambia, for the most part in terms of land policy,2 they have failed to appreciate the complexity of interactions involved in the unfolding of this process. This article's aim is to explore this complexity.

Underdevelopment and dependency: Critical notes

Abstract: (1977). Underdevelopment and dependency: Critical notes. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 92-107.

Sahelian Pastoralists: Underdevelopment, Desertification, and Famine

Abstract: A large number of fields of study are relevant to the genesis of the Sahel famine of 1968-1973, so I have chosen to focus this review on three issues that seem to me the most important: (a) some aspects of the Sahelian pastoral economy and its relation to wider market economies; (b) the demography of Sahelian pastoralists; (c) changes in the last half century, corresponding to the period from the imposition of French colonial rule. Hard information is scarce in all these fields, so it is hazardous to theorize; but without some attempt at explanation of the recent events in terms more satisfactory than "population growth" or "climate change," little progress can be made. I have not drawn specific development policy conclusions from this, preferring to let the historical record speak for itself.

Underdevelopment, dependence, and integration: the politics of regionalism in the Third World

Abstract: Most cases of regional economic integration are among Third World countries, yet research in this field has been dominated by theory based on the European experience. The politics of integration among underdeveloped countries can be better understood within the framework of a theory designed to fit conditions in those regions. Contemporary economic theory provides a basis for such a theory. A successful integration scheme requires a high degree of political cooperation. The problem is that the type of integration scheme most likely to contribute to development is the most difficult to achieve. On the basis of the distribution of the costs and benefits of integration, the policy positions of national and sub-national actors can be predicted on a broad range of integrative measures. The ultimate success of integration depends on the ability of relevant actors to negotiate coalitions in support of policies which will contribute to the development of the region as a whole and which will assure an acceptable distribution of these benefits within the region.

The impact of colonialism on health and health services in Tanzania.

Abstract: This article is about the problems of malnutrition and disease in a rural area of an underdeveloped country, Tanzania. The particular way in which health problems were conceptualized during the colonial era, the structure of the medical services established, and the effects of health care on the health status and size of the rural population of Songea District in Tanzania are shown in the article to have been determined by the economic, social, and political requirements of German and British colonial rulers rather than by the health needs of the African population. Colonial economic policy emphasized the production of cash crops for export, whether by African peasant farmers or by European plantation owners. To provide workers for the plantations, a system of labor migration was instituted. Songea District became an area that supplied male workers to other parts of the country, with grave consequences to the health and nutrition of the women and children left behind. Domestic food production was neglected by Africans forced to migrate in search of cash to pay taxes and by those enganged in the cultivation of cash crops. Extensive malnutrition and persistent ill health related to poor diet are thus traced directly to capitalist underdevelopment of th Tanzanian economy and the structural distortions of a dependent relationship between Tanzania and the metropolitan power.

Dependency theory: a critique

Abstract: Although dependency theory represents an advance over evolutionary theories of development and underdevelopment, it has confronted serious difficulties in attempting to analyze social relationships based on geographical observations and in attempting to construct a model of the world capitalist system. It is argued that these difficulties are rooted in four basic aspects of dependency theory: (1) the basic unit of the world system is seen as a dyadic relation between nations; (2) models of the world system are cumulations of these units into hierarchically ordered sets of roles; (3) geographical and social relationships are collapsed in description, preventing independent analysis of the latter; and (4) basic relations among units of the system are those of exchange instead of production. The major contribution of dependency theory - the powerful description of consequences within dependent regions of dynamics within the world system - can be enhanced, and the difficulties resolved, through its careful integration with Marxian theories of capitalism and imperialism.

The concept of ‘development’

Abstract: Rather than just debate whether there is an ‘African capitalism’ and whether it can be ‘developmental’ such questions are themselves rejected as meaningless. There is no satisfactory definition of ‘development’ that does not already imply ‘capitalism’, even on the most technological definition. Theories of underdevelopment thus beg the question. Moreover insofar as they offer justification for the ‘logic’ of socialism, they are focusing on Utopian questions of its desirability, and not on the scientific and politically practical issue: that is, as capitalism develops, what social forces are being generated which can bring about transition?

Underdevelopment, contract labour and worker consciousness in Namibia, 1915–72

Abstract: In mid-December 1971, thousands of contract workers at Walvis Bay and Windhoek struck against the contract labour system in Namibia. During the following month, the workers' rebellion escalated into a general strike involving some 20,000 migrant labourers, which in the second half of January 1972 sparked a half-stalled peasant insurrection in the densely-populated northern bantustan of Ovamboland. The general outline and causes of the strike have been ably analysed elsewhere.2 As yet, however, little attention has been devoted to the structural determinants and historical evolution of worker consciousness in Namibia. The fact that the recent disruption of South Africa's periphery of 'buffer' states has sharply widened the strategic options available to the liberation movement in Namibia gives added priority to such an analysis. The purpose of this essay is therefore to discuss some of the background factors conditioning the consciousness of the Ovambo contract workers and to make a few tentative observations on the general significance of the strike for its participants. The analysis of systems of recurrent labour migration, particularly in social formations in which capitalist relations of production have intruded upon, but only partially destroyed a pre-existing peasantry, still lacks an adequate set of working concepts, let alone a coherent theory. Recent work on southern Africa

The Cape Breton Coal Industry and the Rise and Fall of the British Empire Steel Corporation

Abstract: Our understanding of regional underdevelopment in Atlantic Canada has been slow to develop. For more than 50 years we have had extensive documentation of the existence of serious regional inequality in Canada. Attempts to explain the reasons for this have been less common. In the 1920s politicians active in the Maritime Rights movement catalogued the "unfilled promises" and "betrayals" of Confederation and demanded increased federal subsidies as compensation. A less subjective interpretation was proposed by S. A. Saunders, C. R. Fay and Harold Innis, who attributed the region's troubles to the new era of industrialism. For the Maritimes it was "prosperity so long as their face was towards the sea, and . . . struggle against adversity when the pull of the land increased". Like an "economic seismograph", the Maritimes registered the Shockwaves of a "rising tide of continental forces that were destined to dominate the economy of the Maritime Provinces". Recent studies have questioned this approach: an economic historian has challenged the myth of the "Golden Age"; an historical geographer has traced the domination of the region by outside forces during the colonial era; an economist has pointed out that during a decisive period in the 1830s and 1840s local entrepreneurs neglected the region's industrial potential.

Resource allocation and agrarian class formation: The problem of social mobility among Russian peasant households, 1880–1930

Abstract: The relationship between social mobility processes and the development of bourgeois social classes in the pre‐collective Russian peasantry has occupied an important place in recent discussion. On one level the discussion has concerned the ‘specificity’ of the peasantry; this is expressed in two quotations which preface the article. On another level discussion has concerned the use of agrarian statistics to establish the scale and significance of both class differentiation and of inter‐class mobility. It is argued below that the knowledge embodied in agrarian statistics can only be understood in relation to the theories of the statisticians. Theoretically reconstructed, the statistics throw new light upon the roles of underdevelopment and patriarchy in processes of class differentiation within the Russian peasantry.

Underdevelopment in malawi: the missionary contribution

Abstract: Two GENERALIZATIONS which have rarely been challenged by historians of Central Africa concern the particular character of Malawi's economy and the special influence of Scottish missionaries.' The particular character of the economy can be demonstrated by a few simple figures. Not only was Malawi in 1972 the third poorest country in the world in terms of gross national product per capita; she was still acting as a labour reserve for the farms and mines of Southern Africa, as she had done for at least sixty years. Over 300,000 Malawians out of a total population of 4,500,000 were working in South Africa and Rhodesia-nearly 124,000 of them in mines in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Migrant labour remittances were estimated at nearly ?30 million, making this form of capital inflow second in importance to tobacco and ahead of tea, the two most successful cash crops. Though African-grown produce had expanded sufficiently in the inter-war years to rival export crops grown on European estates, the central function of Malawi and particularly of the Northern Province remained unaltered. Malawi was underdeveloped in the sense that her economy had been restructured to meet the demands of the Southern African metropole and, in consequence, the control of her economy was no longer in any meaningful sense in the hands of her own inhabitants. Labour from Malawi contributed to the expansion of commercial farming and mining in Rhodesia and South Africa at the expense of developments within Malawi itself.2 As for the influence of Scottish Missions (the Livingstonia Mission of the Free Church of Scotland, founded in 1874 and the Blantyre Mission of the Church of Scotland established a year later), opinion is somewhat divided. In opposition to those who have stressed the political and economic 'progress' resulting from the activities of the Presbyterians, Chanock and Linden have argued that the extent of the change they introduced was limited and that other,

Precariousness and ambiguity: industrial design in dependent countries

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter highlights precariousness and ambiguity related to industrial designs in dependent countries. Industrial design in dependent countries is a gloomy reality—a reality barely camouflaged by that well-meaning optimism that with an occasional condescending gesture, assigns to these peripheral economies the attribute developing. Critical designers today have lost the innocence that assumed one can influence social organization through man-made objects or hardware artifacts. Revolutions are definitely not achieved through objects and even less through designed objects. It is clear by now that underdevelopment is neither a prelude to development nor a kind of toll a society has to pay to reach the expressway or snail path of development. The dependent countries finance their increasing underdevelopment. And in the same way that underdevelopment is the shadow image of development, industrial design on the periphery is the dialectical counterpart of industrial design at the center. The realities of dependent countries present the discomforting and depressing aspects of human life—or better, of attempts at human survival: lack of shelter, lack of food, lack of productive work, lack of sanitation in growing urban agglomerations, and lack of adequate tools and machines.

Local Administration in Zaire and Underdevelopment

Abstract: This article is an exploratory attempt to understand the state of underdevelopment in contemporary Zaire through a study of bureaucratic decision-making process at the local level. It is based on a series of investigations which the author and a group of colleagues carried out in 13 zones in Shaba Region during 1975 and 1976, but our reflections have evolved considerably since then and, to a large extent, have outstripped the reach of the research data, so that the present article should be considered as a report on work-in-progress.

The Anglo-Argentine Connection and the War of 1914—1918

Abstract: The hypothesis of Andre Gunder Frank that Latin America's underdevelopment is partly attributable to unequal exchange in economic relations with the advanced world includes the obverse proposition that Latin America's growth has been most substantial in periods such as wartime when links with the metropolitan countries were weakened. The most explicit statement of this view occurs in the book, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution : … the satellites experience their greatest economic development and especially their most classically capitalist industrial development if and when their ties to their metropolis are weakest. This hypothesis is almost diametrically opposed to the generally accepted thesis that development in the underdeveloped countries follows from the greatest degree of contact with and diffusion from the metropolitan developed countries.

Dependency and Underdevelopment in Black Africa: an Empirical Test

Abstract: In the literature of both comparative politics and international relations there exist two broad theoretical orientations towards the concept of development: capitalist and Marxist or neo-Marxist. The first emphasises the nation as the basic unit of analysis, and assumes that development is a matter of accepting and implementing western forms of political and economic organisation, and of the masses internalising ‘modern’ attitudes and values.1 The second identifies world capitalism as the key unit of analysis, and is convinced that underdevelopment is both created and maintained by this international economic system.2

Dependency, Development, and Inequality in Black Africa

Abstract: Recent studies of development in Africa reflect the broad ideological gulf between the perspectives of classical capitalist developmentalists and neo-Marxist dependency theorists. In the capitalist view, development is seen as a problem of modernization (i.e., westernization). Marxists, on the other hand, perceive the underdevelopment of the third world as a product of western development and the emergence of the world capitalist system. In an effort to inject an empirical element into this ideological debate several analysts have undertaken comparative examinations of the merits of the alternative approaches (Kaufman et al., 1975; McGowan, 1975; 1976; Vengroff, 1975; 1976; Walleri, 1975; Stallings, 1973; Chase-Dunn, 1975). A general examination of the relative merits of the developmental and dependency approaches is beyond the scope of this brief paper. Here die author will attempt to assess the utility of these conflicting approaches as explanations of the particular phenomenon of domestic inequality in black Africa. The question of domestic inequality and development in Africa has unfortunately received only limited empirical consideration (Vengroff, 1976) and then usually from a national rather than a cross-national perspective (Leys, 1973; Harris, 1975). Proponents of capitalist theory suggest that inequality is a natural, short run outcome of the development process. As the level of development increases, there is a broad expansion of the middle class, and hence a decline in inequality (Adelman and Morris, 1973; Paukert, 1973).

The debate on underdevelopment: “On situating Gunder Frank”

Abstract: (1977). The debate on underdevelopment: “On situating Gunder Frank”. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 108-115.

Economic Development in Neo-Marxist Theory

Abstract: Much of the recent discussion of the question of ‘underdevelopment’ has been conducted by authors referring to a process not strictly of underdevelopment’ but of ‘dependency’. The so-called ‘dependency theorists’ include allegedly Marxist and non-Marxist economists and sociologists, among them Dos Santos, Cardoso, Sunkel and Furtado. The work of certain ‘neo-Marxist’ writers, most notably Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy and Andre Gunder Frank, has undoubtedly been very influential in these recent theoretical developments. ‘Dependency theory’ accepts certain ‘neo-Marxist’ conceptions of the nature of development and underdevelopment, in particular the conception of the interdependence of the capitalist world economy and the proposition that development and underdevelopment are partial, interdependent aspects of one global system.1 The criticism of the Baran/Frank conception of ‘underdevelopment’ is largely confined to its alleged ‘Eurocentricity’. It is argued that insufficient attention is paid to the effects of international interdependence on the internal structures of, for example, the Latin American economies. The dependency theorists are particularly concerned with the effects on the ‘class structure’ of these societies.2 These writers do not, however, offer a rigorous theoretical critique of the Baran/Frank thesis. This has serious effects for the work of those authors who claim to be working within Marxist theory. The failure adequately to conceptualise the conditions of the class struggle in ‘underdeveloped’ societies is conceived largely as an oversight on the part of Baran and Frank, rather than a theoretical consequence of their discourse. While it is generally accepted that the Baran/Frank thesis is a correct starting-point for a Marxist analysis of ‘economic development’, it is demonstrated below that this is not the case.

Organizing Underdevelopment From the Inside: The Bureaucratic Economy in Tanganyika, 1919-1940

Abstract: Current research into the origins of African underdevelopment follows, with few exceptions, a paradigm that satisfies the yearnings of many scholars for systems of exploitation with global implications. This paradigm explains Africa's incorporation into a growing macro-entity called the European world-economy, European worldsystem, then capitalist world-system. Argument continues over the timing and techniques of incorporation, but several fundamental assumptions of the paradigm have gained wide and almost uncritical acceptance. Most basic is the notion of levels of economy, which rise from locality through territory, then ascend from metropolis to some final global unit, much like the great chain of being. Linking these levels in ways that allegedly harm the lowest are the combined actions of different agents and agencies. These agents appear more often as members of groups and even classes than as individuals with personal goals. On every level key groups of non-African traders and other business people work to fashion unequal or inequitable relations with various African communities. These relations sometimes coalesce in such intermediate structures as the export economy, which connects local and territorial economies with their metropolitan and global counterparts. Although multitiered, the essential thrust of the paradigm and its variations is bipolar: how impresarios

Underdevelopment and Political Rights: A Revisionist Challenge

Abstract: WHEN THE NEW GOVERNMENTS OF UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS supplanted colonial rule, many were optimistic that these governments could operate within a democratic framework. But these nascent governments drifted into authoritarian forms of political life as they faced the exigencies of self-rule. Representative institutions on the Western pattern broke down and were replaced by single-party arrangements headed by charismatic leaders. This form of government, in turn, has tended to give way to bureaucratic and military regimes.