According to Ankie Hoogvelt, this book is intended to "introduce students todebates regarding the development prospects of the Third World." This sheaccomplishes in very compact and richly documented detail. Indeed, thereare so many citations that the lack of a bibliography is sorely felt.The book is divided into three parts, each addressing a broad themeaffecting development and the Third World. The first considers the historicalroute of capitalist expansion into a world economic system by means of,among other things, the core countries' depredations of their peripheralcolonies. The second treats the world economy's increasing internationalizationand the retrenchment of wealth accumulation by means of strategichegemony and economic regulation, especially by the United States. Thefinal part examines the resultant situations in the four distinct socioculturalrealms of the Third World, devoting a chapter to each: sub-Saharan Africa,the Islamic world, East Asia, and Latin America.True to the spirit of debate she is trying to foster in her students,Hoogvelt challenges some of the conventional assumptions about humansociety's advancement under globalization. She points out that, contraryto expert consensus, the flow of wealth to the Third world has declinedsince the colonial era. Or, again, that world trade represented a greaterpercentage of world production at the beginning of the twentieth century,before the era of globalization, than it did at its end, when it was in fullstride. Or, yet again, that much of the apparent increase in trade, especially ...
Globalization and the Postcolonial World
