Underdevelopment & Dependency

Underdevelopment & Dependency

1. Intro

   • Concerned with how poor countries depend on others
     • Elites exploit those in rural areas

2. Background

   • Slavery
     • Established dependency
       • Kick started industrial revolution
   • Colonialism
     • Benefited capitalist system
       • Cheap food, raw materials and labour

3. Andre Gunder Frank

   • Developing countries difficult to sustain development
     • West had deliberately underdeveloped them
       • Left in a state of dependency

4. Exploitation

   • Peripheral countries depend of export earnings on cash crops or raw materials
     • Overproduction or fall in demand - negative effect on Peripheral countries
       • E.g. From a £1 chocolate bar - 8p goes to the cocoa farmers

5. TNC's

   • Operate in more than one country
   • Responsible for 3/4 of world trade
   • Approx. 130 states have economies smaller than top 50 TNC's
   • Sweatshops criticised - use of child labour and exploitative wages

6. Criticisms

   • Defining - Frank used vague terms
     • Difficult to operationalise
   • Benefits - Western nations bring benefits to Peripheral nations
     • E.g. Success of Asian Tigers down to Japanese aid