Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to the Western, Eurocentric, modernity-based models of the post-1945
'modern era of development' were idealistic, geo-political, formulations
of 'non-capitalist development' that were written by Soviet scholars.
For example, Soviet scholarly references were written in English
by Solodovnikov and Bogoslovsky in 1975 and Andreyev in 1977 to
help foment a 'non-capitalist' path to development by the New Jewel
Movement in Grenada's 'Revolution' in 1979-83. Often, translations of
Lenin's writings on 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism'
(1963) and 'The Right of Nations to Self-Determination' (1972)
,
as well
as those of
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
were used as theoretical
and ideological guidance by local revolutionaries and radicals. Some
academically trained political leaders of newly independent countries
wrote their own nationalistic manifestos advocating such socialist revo-
lutionary models; see Tanzanian Julius Nyerere's
Ujamaa: Essays on
Socialism
(1968)
,
and Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah's
Neocolonialism:
the Last Stage of Imperialism
(1965)
.
Other radical authors penned socialist and Marxist critiques that
became well-cited authoritative texts for decades. One such 'exemplar'
is Brazilian-born Paulo Friere's
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
(2000, first
published 1970)
,
which grew to become an extremely influential text for
educators interested in improvements in literacy in Third World terri-
tories. Another exemplar is Martinique-born Franz Fanon whose
The
Wretched of the Earth
(1967)
,
was a devastating critique of colonialism's
damaging impacts on the psyche of colonized societies. Particularly
perceptive was Fanon's personification of the imitative attitudes of the
new generation(s) of Third World leaders, which would lead them to
follow in the footsteps of their recently deposed colonial masters and to
continue similar paths of servitude and diffidence to these 'outsiders' in
their post-colonial relations.
73
Early Radical 'Anti-development' Critiques:
dependencia
and the 'development
of underdevelopment'
In his influential 1957 anti-capitalist treatise
Political Economy of
Growth,
Russian-American, Marxist-economist Paul Baran described
the reasons for Latin America's underdevelopment as being a conse-
quence of the forming of special partnerships between advanced nations
and powerful elite classes in the continent's underdeveloped, or
pre-capitalist countries. These special partnerships perpetuated the
