Global South 2007 Lecture 3:October 5, 2007 Modernization and Dependency

Mainstream Perspectives: Modernization  There are “traditional”societies and “modern”societies  Development is the transition from the traditional to the modern  Modernization is that process

Questions that Modernization theorists ask  How to define modernization  Why did it occur where it occurred first?  How can we replicate the experience: i.e., modernize other societies

Modernization defined

Why did it occur? “In the eighteenth century, a series of inventions transformed the manufacture of cotton in England and gave rise to a new mode or production --the factory system. During these years, other branches of industry effected comparable advances, and all these together, mutually reinforcing one another, made possible further gains on an ever-widening front.” The Unbound Prometheus

Industrial Revolution  the substitution of machines --rapid, regular, precise, tireless --for human skill and effort;  the substitution of inanimate for animate sources of power;  the use of new and far more abundant raw materials, in particular, the substitution of mineral for vegetable or animal substances. [David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, 1969]

Why did it not occur elsewhere?  Think!

Can it be replicated?  Some argue yes  Critical theorists argue no  Some ask whether it is even desirable to replicate

Rostow  Five stages of growth  the traditional society  the preconditions for take-off  the take-off  the drive to maturity, and  the age of high mass-consumption.

Critique  Linear  Sees growth as a ‘naturalized’ process  Does not identify forces of change  No contradictions  Assumes the ‘superiority’ of the Western model

“People’s history” of the Industrial Revolution l Gallery of Industrial Revolution Other views

Dependency  Modernization cannot be replicated in its entirety  It was a specific phenomena that occurred in the West because of a combination of factors  Not linear

Dependency: concept  Development of Underdevelopment  That the development of the advanced world and underdevelopment of the “backward” world are parts of the same process  Underdevelopment and dependency cannot be overcome unless the links between the “advanced” and the “backward” world are severed

Dependency: two views Andre Gunder Frank: No development Cardoso & Faletto: Dependent development (or “associated- dependent development)

Cardoso and Faletto (1) “Analyses that relate development to modern society and underdevelopment to traditional society are too simple. It may happen that a society modernizes its patterns of consumption, education, and so forth without a corresponding advance in development, if by development we understand less dependency and self- sustained growth based on the local capital accumulation and on the dynamism of the industrial sector”

Cardoso and Faletto (2) “In almost all theories of modernization it is assumed that the course taken by political, social, and economic systems of Western Europe and the United States foretells the future for the underdeveloped countries. The "development process" would consist in completing and even reproducing the various stages that characterized the social transformation of these countries.(4) Therefore, the historical variations, the specificities of each situation of underdevelopment, have little value for this type of sociology”.

Cardoso and Faletto: Historical specificities  To analyze development properly, we must consider in their totality the "historic specificities," both economic and social, underlying the development processes at the national and international levels.

Binaries Suggests that binaries such as  Development/underdevelopment  Center/periphery  Internal/external  Traditional/modern  Economic/social development Are not useful in the analysis of social change

“National underdevelopment”  This idea stresses that peripheral economies are not in total stagnation  Forces of change are in play  “development” must account for these internal changes in a specific manner

Dependency: Approach  Political Economy “Political economy, in the widest sense, is the science of the laws governing the production and exchange of the material means of subsistence in human society”.. “The conditions under which men produce and exchange vary from country to country, and within each country again from generation to generation. Political economy, therefore, cannot be the same for all countries and for all historical epochs…”..

Defining Political Economy (2)  “Anyone who attempted to bring the political economy of Tierra del Fuego under the same laws as are operative in present-day England would obviously produce nothing but the most banal commonplaces. Political economy is therefore essentially a historical science. It deals with material which is historical, that is, constantly changing…”  Can you guess who the author is ?

Extending the definition  We can think of a feminist definition of political-economy as the science of laws governing production and exchange as seen from a gender perspective  Similarly, when we say “political economy of globalization”, we want to understand how production and exchange takes place under globalization