Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
people, and thus would recirculate capital into the economy at large, giving it the
kickstart that would enable further economic growth.
Friedmann and Weaver's thesis was that in the early years, the TVA was an
inheritor of true regionalism and a regeneration of local initiative; only in the
post-war era, when a need for nuclear power became apparent and agriculture in
poor regions was no longer a priority, did the programme change as the TVA
was subverted by national concerns, which were not those of the region. Instead
of a truly integrated regional agency for multipurpose river basin development,
the TVA it became an organizer of mass power production, between nuclear power
plants and those already producing hydroelectric power on the Tennessee River
and its tributaries. Its other functions and its links to the local communities were
lost, and with them the whole “territorial” style of regional development.
Functional development (for the nation) replaced territorial development (for the
region).
This assumes that the territorial version was always there ready to happen, and
that it was merely suppressed by national concerns. In fact, the nation was
involved from the beginning in the programme for the Tennessee River, a truly
top-down organization, and had the TVA relied on local initiatives, it would
never have happened. There was no basis for Development from Below in the
region, and the rural communities of the southern Appalachians, often composed
mostly of poor sharecroppers, were in desperate need of outside help and unable
to apply any kind of endogenous initiative for their own development. The moral
of the story is that, in the world's richest country, a scheme for regeneration of a
poor region could not be left to the local inhabitants alone. If this was the case
for a poor region of the economically most advanced country in the world, it
would obviously be still more relevant to regions in poor countries.
Other examples
From the development record there are remarkably few examples of successful
and long-term regional development, whether planned or spontaneous, occurring
from the grassroots. In addition, as commented on elsewhere (Ch. 2), it appears
impossible to predict where these new regions might be. A historic example from
Latin America was that of the Antioquia region of Colombia, around the city of
Medellin, its economic development based on a large number of independent
miners working in the mountains nearby whose small capital was then
transferred into the coffee and other industries (Morris 1981). This region also
benefited from the relative absence of the more typical social structure in Latin
America, of large estate owners dominating economy and society, contrasting
with small farmers with no capital.
Modern examples are few and far between. Stöhr (1981) cites some examples
of “self-reliant development” from Asia and Latin America, but these have not
generally extended to other regions, and most have disappeared in the period
since he wrote. In the text by Taylor & Mackenzie (1992), which attempted to
