Dependency: a Critical Synthesis of the Literature

Abstract

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.

Interdependent Industrialization: Japan, Indonesia and the Asahan Project

“…SubstantiaI attention has been focused upon the exploitive role of multinational resource corporations (MNRCs) in the developing world (Frank 1969;Chilcote 1977). In the context of the global aluminum industry, underdevelopment in the periphery is in this perspective in part a result of substantial revenue leakage to the core through oligopolistic competition and vertical integration by a handful of MNRCs (Girvan 1970;Graham 1982).…”

Flow of Online Content from Production to Consumption in the Context of Globalization Theory

“…Wallerstein (1974), recognizing the dependence of the semi-periphery and the periphery on the core, proposed world-system theory, which envisions globalization not as a new phenomenon but as an extension of capitalism, reproducing the basic structure of inequality with the flow of some value from the periphery to the semi-periphery and then to the core (Chase-Dunn & Grimes, 1995;Galtung 1971;Robinson, 2007). In line with this theory, previous studies have employed dependency theory to explain the lower economic development of Latin America in the 1970s and attributed the underdevelopment of the periphery to the exploitation of the core in terms of economic and political influences (Chilcote, 1974). In the 1970s, debate on the new world information and communication order (NWICO) was held by UNESCO.…”

Imperialism and Dependency

“…Latin American Perspectives opened its pages with a thorough balance sheet of dependency studies by Ronald Chilcote (Chilcote, 1974). This was in reality a synthesis of the dependency literature as the title announced.…”