Underdevelopment & Dependency - Notes

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Intro

Concerned with how poor countries depend on others

Elites exploit those in rural areas

Background

Slavery

Colonialism

Established dependency

Kick started industrial revolution

Benefited capitalist system

Cheap food, raw materials and labour

Andre Gunder Frank

Developing countries difficult to sustain development

West had deliberately underdeveloped them

Left in a state of dependency

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

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

Criticisms

Defining - Frank used vague terms

Benefits - Western nations bring benefits to Peripheral nations

Difficult to operationalise

E.g. Success of Asian Tigers down to Japanese aid

Underdevelopment & Dependency