Underdevelopment

About: Underdevelopment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4545 publications have been published within this topic receiving 86860 citations.

Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance

Abstract: Over the past five centuries, advances in Western understanding of and control over the material world have strongly influenced European responses to non-Western peoples and cultures. In Machines as the Measure of Men, Michael Adas explores the ways in which European perceptions of their scientific and technological superiority shaped their interactions with people overseas. Adopting a broad, comparative perspective, he analyzes European responses to the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, India, and China, cultures that they judged to represent lower levels of material mastery and social organization. Beginning with the early decades of overseas expansion in the sixteenth century, Adas traces the impact of scientific and technological advances on European attitudes toward Asians and Africans and on their policies for dealing with colonized societies. He concentrates on British and French thinking in the nineteenth century, when, he maintains, scientific and technological measures of human worth played a critical role in shaping arguments for the notion of racial supremacy and the "civilizing mission" ideology which were used to justify Europe's domination of the globe. Finally, he examines the reasons why many Europeans grew dissatisfied with and even rejected this gauge of human worth after World War I, and explains why it has remained important to Americans. Showing how the scientific and industrial revolutions contributed to the development of European imperialist ideologies, Machines as the Measure of Men highlights the cultural factors that have nurtured disdain for non-Western accomplishments and value systems. It also indicates how these attitudes, in shaping policies that restricted the diffusion of scientific knowledge, have perpetuated themselves, and contributed significantly to chronic underdevelopment throughout the developing world. Adas's far-reaching and provocative book will be compelling reading for all who are concerned about the history of Western imperialism and its legacies.

Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil

Abstract: The four essays in this book offer a sweeping reinterpretation of Latin American history as an aspect of the world-wide spread of capitalism in its commercial and industrial phases. Dr. Frank lays to rest the myth of Latin American feudalism, demonstrating in the process the impossibility of a bourgeois revolution in a part of the world which is already part and parcel of the capitalist system.

Dependent accumulation and underdevelopment

Abstract: Why, while Europe, North America, and Australia have developed, have Africa, much of Asia, and Latin America remained underdeveloped? Andre Gunder Frank sets out to answer this basic question by showing how world capital accumulation has led to the differentiation of these regions within the single world-embracing economic system. Unequal exchange between regions, combined with the differential transformation of productive, social, and political relations within regions, has led to the capitalist development of some areas and to the underdevelopment of others.