Modernization and Dependency: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Latin American Underdevelopment

Abstract

Modernization and dependency are two sharply different perspectives seeking to explain the same reality. Like the modernization perspective, the dependency perspective resulted from the work of many different scholars in different branches of the social sciences. The dependency perspective rejects the assumption made by modernization writers that the unit of analysis in studying underdevelopment is the national society. The dependency perspective assumes that the development of a national or regional unit can only be understood in connection with its historical insertion into the worldwide political-economic system which emerged with the wave of European colonizations of the world. Dependency in any given society is a complex set of associations in which the external dimensions are determinative in varying degrees and, indeed, internal variables may very well reinforce the pattern of external linkages. Dependency consequently acquired a "new character," as dos Santos noted, which would have a profound effect on Latin America.

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