The following synthesis attempts to identify the major tendencies in the dependency literature and to introduce the reader to the major works and issues on the subject. Ronald Chilcote is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside.

Students of dependency have struggled over the past decade to integrate their ideas with a theory of Marxism. Their work has opened up new questions and areas of investigation and stimulated interest in many issues that run through the thought of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Criticism has evolved in the contemporary study of dependency with the acknowledgement of theoretical weaknesses: confusion over terminology, undue emphasis on market in the domestic and international economy, and so on. Controversy has arisen around various explanations of dependency which are rooted in have incorporated a conception of dependency in their writings about other areas. Considerable debate has ensued.The debate over dependency theory, unlike some scholarly controversies, has been rich in content and relevant in application. Theorists of dependency have been concerned with nothing less than unraveling the essence of past historical processes, and they have presented contending interpretations of historical reality. These theorists have contributed to some remarkable historical breakthroughs as well as to detours and setbacks in theory and revolutionary practice. The critics of dependency have shown no less complexity in their contributions.An introductory review of the debate in general and this journal issue in particular should be convincing of the proposition that scholars have indeed struggled over a praxis of some consequence. Since the world does not present us with unequivocal and verifiable responses to the questions that ensue from the debate, the polemics over dependency continue. The present purpose is to draw upon the implications of these polemics, especially in this journal.

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This book discusses twentieth-century Brazilian political thought, arguing that while Rio de Janeiro intellectuals envisaged the state and the national bourgeoisie as the means to overcome dependency on foreign ideas and culture, São Paulo intellectuals looked to civil society and the establishment of new academic institutions in the search for national identity. Ronald H. Chilcote begins his study by outlining Brazilian intellectuals' attempt to transcend a sense of inferiority emanating from Brazilian colonialism and backwardness. Next, he traces the struggle for national identity in Rio de Janeiro through an account of how intellectuals of varying political persuasions united in search of a political ideology of national development. He then presents an analysis by São Paulo intellectuals on racial discrimination, social inequality, and class differentiation under early capitalism and industrialization. The book concludes with a discussion on how Brazilian intellectuals challenged foreign thinking about development through the state and representative democratic institutions, in contrast to popular and participatory democratic practices.

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