Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
treating all places as equal and then applying economic rules to demonstrate
what will happen to them. This overlooks all the other attributes of places, which
are paradoxically the traditional field of geographical enquiry, and which require
a more detailed analysis (Gore 1984). Such a critique is valid, although the
spatial type of analysis is something that stemmed from its foundation in
economics and the need to focus on certain key variables.
Radical views
Radical or left-wing interpretations of development are not directly comparable
with orthodox or right-wing ones. They start with different premises, use
different data and methods of analysis, and their findings neither confirm nor
deny the orthodox ones. For most writers, the analysis made is directly historical,
using case studies in the real world, rather than the economist's reduction to a
few variables and attempts to quantify the process. Radical views do not deny the
capitalist engine for growth and development. What they challenge is the
identification of main factors, and instead of capital, labour and land, they insist
on power, of individuals and of organizations such as governments, in
controlling the course of development. To do this, they necessarily have recourse
to historical and political data.
Dependency writing
In this version of the genre, the central idea is that development in the Third
World is not a matter of abstract capital and labour, but of controlling forces,
notably the landowners and administrators of colonial lands, and the colonizing
forces of the metropolitan country. This line of thought, developed first in Latin
America in the 1960s and translated and developed in English by Andre Gunder
Frank (1967), became influential as an interpretation of the evolution of those
countries that were colonies of European powers. For Frank, capitalism as an
advance on feudalism was established at an early point in time, perhaps from the
16th century, and dominated world development from that time. For the
economic historians who were the chief exponents of dependency theory,
capitalism became a structure within which the whole of the modern period
could be interpreted. Both development and underdevelopment could be
explained by it.
As with the right-wing view, a centre-periphery structure was considered, the
centre or metropolis (Frank here using a term from the Latin American literature
with a different meaning to its general acceptance) being the country or region
where capital was accumulated, developing industrial firms and relying on the
periphery for raw materials to supply these firms. The centre became
prosperous because it could monopolize the manufacturing industries while
relegating the primary products to the colonies, or economic colonies.
