SI Editor: Dr Philip Roberts
Alternautas journal is devoted to a critical engagement with currents of thought which emerge from Latin America, and particularly their contrast with mainstream understandings of the region which come from the Global North. In that vein, Dependency Theory is clearly one of the most foundational schools of thought to have emerged from the global periphery to provide a counterpoint to stagist, Eurocentric models of development framed as ‘modernization’ (Kay, [1989] 2010, Love, 1996). Drawing on the history of the region, this tradition explores how the ‘underdevelopment’ of Latin America is an outcome of the plunder which began with colonialism and has continued into the present day, albeit in new forms (Galeano, [1971] 2009).
During the last few years, Dependency Theory has undergone a timely renaissance on multiple fronts. A new generation of scholars is engaging with lessons drawn from the experience of the original Dependency School which spanned both Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Giraudo, 2020; Kvangraven 2021; Alami et. al. 2022; Antunes de Oliveira & Kvangraven, 2023). Simultaneously, translations of classic works of Dependency Theory are becoming available in English for the first time, including Rui Mauro Marini’s foundational work Dialectics of Dependency (2022). This rising accessibility of classic works and adaptation of their insights to a new global context provide an ideal moment for a discussion of the merits, limitations, and divisions within Dependency Theory.
Though a diverse school of thought from the outset, the central idea of classical Dependency Theory was that linkages to the West which constituted the ‘core’ of global capitalism were antagonistic to the development of the global ‘periphery.’ Within this framework, Dependency approaches can be subdivided into two broad camps.The ‘reformist’ tendency within Dependency Theory sought to reform the global economy by changing the rules which governed global trade and investment, and was institutionalised in the UN Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Conversely, the ‘revolutionary’ tendency asserted that reform was impossible, and rejected the idea of an alliance between working class and bourgeois forces for development, a strategy that was common to both mainstream development thinking and stagist formulations of Marxism. This tendency drew particular inspiration from the 1953 Cuban Revolution, as a popular struggle against capitalist imperialism and in pursuit of socialism.
In contemporary context, Latin America clearly remains within the global ‘periphery’ as described by Prebisch, Marini, and others. However, both the structure of dependency and the strategies for challenging underdevelopment have seen considerable transformation and variation. The rise of China has seen a proliferation of studies which apply Dependency Theory to Sino-African relations (see, inter alia, Taylor, 2016; Carmody, 2020 ), but a parallel literature also explores how the asymmetric structure of ‘South-South’ cooperation with China keeps Latin America in the global periphery (Jenkins 2012; Stallings, 2020).
To grapple with this shifting historical context, the current wave of engagement with Dependency Theory is elaborating on old typographies, and identifying new mechanisms of unequal exchange. For example, Reis and Antunes de Oliveira (2023) observe that Brazil and Mexico’s subordination to the global ‘core’ passed through several distinct phases, from direct colonial control, to trade dependence on the import of manufactures, subordination to foreign MNCs as a means of industrialization, and finally subordination to interest-bearing capital as financial actors linked to the Global North dominate both economy and politics. Equally, in the current era of environmental degradation and ‘global boiling’, ecologically focused adaptations of Dependency Theory have shifted attention from the appropriation of value and profit towards the plunder of energy, natural resources, and biomass from the still-open veins of Latin America (Dorninger and Eisenmenger, 2016; Infante-Amate et. al. 2022; Saes, 2023)
However, the proliferation of analyses of the mechanisms of exploitation also serves to underline the lacunae of the renewed Dependency Theory. As even its main advocates acknowledge, almost all of the original studies of Latin American underdevelopment failed to take account of gender and race when analysing the subordination of the periphery to the core (Antunes de Oliveira, 2021). Whether these omissions can be addressed by a renovated analysis of Latin American dependency is open to debate (Villegas Plá, 2023).
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of CEPAL, the 70th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, and the first publication of Dialectics of Dependency in English, Alternautas calls for papers which discuss the historical roots, conceptual controversies, and contemporary relevance of Dependency Theory. The editors would especially encourage contributions on:
- Financial subordination, unequal ecological exchange, and social reproduction as mechanisms of dependency
- Heritages of the Cuban Revolution and new forms of resistance in Latin America
- Contrasting ‘situations of Dependence’ in Latin America
- The political dimensions of ‘underdevelopment’ during and after the Pink Tide
- The shift towards a Sino-Latin American dependency
- The ‘reformist’ and ‘revolutionary’ paths from Dependency
- Rui Mauro Marini’s specific contributions to Dependency Theory, especially on sub-imperialism and super-exploitation
- Vital Dependency Theory works which remain untranslated, such as that of Maria da Conceição Tavares and Vania Bambirra.
- Historical debates and controversies within Dependency Theory, such as between Structuralist and Marxist interpretations, or the Cardoso-Marini debate
- Book reviews of classic works in contemporary context
- Alternatives to and divergences from Dependency Theory, such as the decolonial turn by Anibal Quijano
- The contemporary role of Dependency Theory in imagining an alternate ‘World Order’
Timeline:
Publication of Call for Papers: April 2024
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 14th of June 2024
Papers accepted communicated by: End of June 2024
Deadline for submission of full papers: End of August 2024
Deadline for 1st round of reviews: November 2024
Deadline for revised papers: January 2025
Deadline for submission of final revised version: Mid-March 2025
Publication: April-May 2025
Abstracts must be submitted by email to philip.roberts@york.ac.uk no later than midnight on Friday 14th of June 2024.
References:
Alami, I., Alves, C., Bonizzi, B., Kaltenbrunner, A., Koddenbrock, K., Kvangraven, I., & Powell, J. (2022). International financial subordination: a critical research agenda. Review of International Political Economy, 1-27.
Antunes de Oliveira, F. (2021). Who are the super-exploited? Gender, race, and the intersectional potentialities of dependency theory. Dependent capitalisms in contemporary Latin America and Europe, 101-128.
Antunes de Oliveira, F., & Kvangraven, I. H. (2023). Back to Dakar: Decolonizing international political economy through dependency theory. Review of International Political Economy, 1-25.
Cardoso, F. H. (1977). The consumption of dependency theory in the United States. Latin American Research Review, 12(3), 7-24.
Carmody, P. (2020). Dependence not debt-trap diplomacy. Area development and policy, 5(1), 23-31.
Dorninger, C., & Eisenmenger, N. (2016). South America's biophysical involvement in international trade: the physical trade balances of Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil in the light of ecologically unequal exchange. Journal of Political Ecology, 23(1), 394-409.
Galeano, E. (2009 [1971]). Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. London: Profile Books.
Giraudo, M. E. (2020). Dependent development in South America: China and the soybean nexus. Journal of Agrarian Change, 20(1), 60-78.
Infante-Amate, J., Urrego-Mesa, A., Pinero, P., & Tello, E. (2022). The open veins of Latin America: Long-term physical trade flows (1900–2016). Global Environmental Change, 76, 102579.
Jenkins, R. (2012). Latin America and China—a new dependency?. Third World Quarterly, 33(7), 1337-1358.
Kay, C. (2010). Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment (Vol. 102). Routledge.
Kvangraven, I. H. (2021). Beyond the stereotype: Restating the relevance of the dependency research programme. Development and Change, 52(1), 76-112.
Love, J. L. (1996). Crafting the third world: theorizing underdevelopment in Rumania and Brazil. Stanford University Press.
Marini, R. M. (2022). The Dialectics of Dependency. NYU Press.
Reis, N., & de Oliveira, F. A. (2023). Peripheral financialization and the transformation of dependency: a view from Latin America. Review of International Political Economy, 30(2), 511-534.
Saes, B. M. (2023). Ecologically Unequal Exchange: The Renewed Interpretation of Latin American Debates by the Barcelona School. In The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology: A Companion in Honour of Joan Martinez-Alier (pp. 147-155). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Stallings, B. (2020). Dependency in the twenty-first century?: The political economy of China-Latin America relations. Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, I. (2016). Dependency redux: Why Africa is not rising. Review of African Political Economy, 43(147), 8-25.
Villegas Plá, B. (2023). Dependency theory meets feminist economics: a research agenda. Third World Quarterly, 1-18.