Urban Class and Communal Consciousness in Colonial Punjab: The Genesis of India's Intermediate Regime

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Fox

A cornerstone of Wallerstein's (1974) theory of the capitalist world system is that economic development occurs in certain (core) regions of the world system at the expense of development in other (peripheral) regions. This thesis, accepted in one form or another by scholars following a dependency, neo-Marxist, or unequal exchange conception of economic development (as, for example, Amin 1976 or Laclau 1971; see discussion in Foster-Carter 1973 and Kahn 1980: 203ff) provides the foundation for their avowal of the ‘development of underdevelopment.’ The development of the core industrial capitalist nations required, so they argue, the distorted and repressed economic development of the third world.

Itinerario ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Zhilian ◽  
Luo Rongqu

The Third World today is the historic product of the overseas expansion of European and North American capitalism. Prior to the rise of modern capitalism, the world had been pluralistic. Different centres of civilisation had developed independently. Between them there had been cultural and commercial intercourse. Two historic missions were completed by European capitalism: firstly, the conquest of the world, and in its wake, colonial plunderings; secondly, the integration of the isolated and the peripheric regions into a unified world system.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 695-695
Author(s):  
Howard P. Lehman

Since the end of the Cold War, development studies have fallen to the wayside as attention has shifted to the democratization process in Eastern Europe, the increased integration of the European Union, and the effects of economic globalization in the advanced industrialized countries. The developing world was seen as an afterthought or, in some cases, as arenas of misunderstandable ethnic or religious conflict, structural poverty, disease, and other hardships. However, in the context of September 11, more attention now is on the developing world, perhaps not so much on economic development, but more on containing various terrorist organizations. Yet development studies still exist, and this area of study maintains an historical connection to several decades worth of academic research. Scholars persistently ask such questions as why the South is poor and politically weak compared to countries in the North. Answers generally are located in the dependency literature of unequal economic relations leading to unequal power relations. Darryl C. Thomas, in The Theory and Practice of Third World Solidarity, asks this question but provides a somewhat different response. The economic and political inequality in the world is not necessarily due to economic ideology but to the color of skin (p. xi). The solidarity of the Third World that Thomas sees in the past is one based on race, and racial solidarity should be the means by which the poor and powerless of the Third World transform unequal power relations. Thomas refers to this relationship as global apartheid, defining it as a structure of the world system that combines political economy and racial antagonism (p. 26). He states that global apartheid refers to the continuation of white-minority dominance of political, social, legal, cultural, and economic decision-making apparatuses within the world system (p. 111) and that this form of racial capitalism has become a permanent feature in the world system.


1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-147
Author(s):  
Paul Kellogg

AbstractThrough a critique of the “internationalist” arguments outlined and defended by Paul Kellogg, Elisabeth Gidengil has mounted a defence of dependency theory as it has been applied to Canadian political economy. She argues that dependency theory, far from being discarded as Kellogg has suggested, must be part of any new synthesis that is developed in Canadian political economy. She argues that Bukharin's Marxism, defended by Kellogg, is too abstract to be of any real guide in this new synthesis. This reply first situates where a “Bukharinist” approach is in agreement with dependency theory. Both recognize the existence of a rigid hierarchy of nations that impedes development in the Third World. But in Canada, it is argued, this insight has been stood on its head, Canada being theorized as “dependent” and suffering dependency-induced “structural weaknesses.” A selection of empirical examples is introduced to indicate the weak factual ground on which this claim is based. If there are aspects of the dependency paradigm to be retained, in the Canadian case this requires inverting the way in which this paradigm has usually been applied and insisting on Canada's entrenched position, alongside the other G7 powers, at the top of the hierarchy of nations in the world system.


1988 ◽  
Vol 64 (6) ◽  
pp. 464-468
Author(s):  
Prem Kumar ◽  
K. K. Sharma

Sustainable economic development and the environment are the two sides of a coin. The World Bank as the largest financier of the Third World development must seek not only a decent return on its investment, but it must also ensure that development projects are appropriate and in the best interests of developing countries. To achieve these goals, the Third World must be allowed to make its own decisions on development issues. This requires the substantial dilution of the World Bank's power and an enhanced role for the Third World technical manpower to act as catalysts for development and technology transfer. Sustainable economic development will remain as a theoretical concept unless this orientation is brought about in the World Bank. Without changes, the World Bank has the potential of becoming the largest agent of environmental degradation in the world.


1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-82
Author(s):  
Zia Ul Haq

Amiya Kumar Bagchi, an eminent economist of the modern Cambridge tradition, has produced a timely treatise, in a condensed form, on the development problems of the Third World countries. The author's general thesis is that economic development in the developing societies necessarily requires a radical transformation in the economic, social and political structures. As economic development is actually a social process, economic growth should not be narrowly defined as the growth of the stock of rich capitalists. Neither can their savings be equated to capital formation whose impact on income will presumably 'trickle down' to the working classes. Economic growth strategies must not aim at creating rich elites, because, according to the author, "maximizing the surplus in the hands of the rich in the Third World is not, however, necessarily a way of maximizing the rate of growth".


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kalter

AbstractIn the second half of the twentieth century, the transnational ‘Third World’ concept defined how people all over the globe perceived the world. This article explains the concept’s extraordinary traction by looking at the interplay of local uses and global contexts through which it emerged. Focusing on the particularly relevant setting of France, it examines the term’s invention in the context of the Cold War, development thinking, and decolonization. It then analyses the reviewPartisans(founded in 1961), which galvanized a new radical left in France and provided a platform for a communication about, but also with, the Third World. Finally, it shows how the association Cedetim (founded in 1967) addressed migrant workers in France as ‘the Third World at home’. In tracing the Third World’s local–global dynamics, this article suggests a praxis-oriented approach that goes beyond famous thinkers and texts and incorporates ‘lesser’ intellectuals and non-textual aspects into a global conceptual history in action.


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