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modernisation 1, dependency theory 5, post development 2, marxist 7, hyper…
modernisation 1
This theory argues that development can only happen if cultural barriers in developing societies are overcome.
The persistence of global poverty and inequality in 2015 suggests that this theory is wrong as this is despite 70 years of billions of dollars of investment in the developing world based on this theory.
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Walt Rustow is a leading theorist who believes that development is an evolutionary process and societies progress up an economic development ladder which has 5 stages.
Sam Huntington is a theorist and agrees the importance of culture as a primary variable for development and suggests Western culture is ‘exceptional’ compared with that of developing societies.
The belief that people in developing societies need to develop an ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ if economic growth is to be achieved and this could only happen if people in these societies became more accepting of Western ideas such as meritocracy and individualism.
Black (2002) argues this theory helped to raise consciousness of the poverty problem in the developing world-led to emergence of popular movements such as make Poverty History.
This theory has been criticised as it suggests that the traditional and modern cannot be successfully combined.
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One motivation of this theory was the ideological desire to prevent the spread of communism before 1990 and to prevent the spread of religious fundamentalism as part of the ‘war on terror’ after 9/11.
This theory has been criticised as it assumes that all societies will advance through the same fixed set of changes.
Some claim that this theory is ethnocentric because it argues that Western forms of civilisation are superior.
This theory ignores the ‘crisis of modernism’ in the developed world, such as poverty and homelessness.
dependency theory 5
Hoogvelt (2001) argues that a strength of this theory is that it has been a major influence on many developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s.
Frank argues that the world capitalist system is organised as an interlocking chain with the powerful and wealthy metropolis at one end and the undeveloped satellite countries at the other end.
This theory argues that the developed West has deliberately underdeveloped developing countries in a variety of ways, leaving them in a state of dependency.
A criticism of this theory is that Frank neglects the fact that Western exploitation of developing nations often occurs at the convenience of the elites of the developing world.
A criticism of this theory is that Born et al (2003) argue that if the developed world wanted the undeveloped world to be in a constant state of dependency then they would have blocked the development of LEDCs and NICs.
This theory argues that dependency and underdevelopment were established through slavery and colonialsm.
A criticism of this theory is that it paints the relationship between the metropolis and satellite as always negative, but some say this is oversimplistic.
This theory argues that dependency continues in the modern day through neo-colonialism. Frank argues that this new form of colonialism is more subtle but that it is just as destructive as colonialism.
post development 2
Escobar claims that the Western model of development is a top down approach that treats people and cultures as abstract concepts and statistical figures to be moved around in the name of progress.
Esteva (1992) and Sachs (1992) argue that development was always unjust, that it never worked and that it has clearly failed. Black concludes that 5 decades of development has produced a form of socio-economic apartheid.
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Some who are convinced by this theory think that development is a ‘hoax’ in that it was never designed to deal with humanitarian and environmental problems.
Sahlins argues that Western aid agencies often incorrectly assume that people who do not have many material possessions are in poverty and unhappy.
This theory has been criticised as it condemns most Western attempts to help the developing world as perverse-this devalues the efforts of those who believe they have a moral imperative to help those worse off than themselves.
marxist 7
This theory suggests that there is an international division of labour consisting of 3 types of capitalist zone: the core countries, semi-periphery countries and the periphery countries.
The most important criticism of this theory is that it is vague in its definitions of concepts such as ‘core’, ‘peripheral’ and so on, and many of its arguments cannot be measured or tested.
Marxists who were unhappy with dependency theory have subscribed to this alternative Marxists theory founded by Wallerstein which argues that globalisation has always been an important part of the way capitalism organises itself.
This theory partially solves a weakness of dependency theory-the vast economic variation in the developing world.
The main problem with this theory is that it assumes that the economy is driving all other parts of the system.
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neoliberalism 6
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The ideas of this theory often shaped the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank who often lent money to developing countries in the 1990s on the condition that land reform policies were abandoned and/or that government spending on health, education and welfare was reduced.
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This theory claims that the only way to achieve development is through the adoption of the free-market model of capitalism.
transformationalist 4
This theory criticises the Marxist theory of globalisation because it suggests that the flow of culture is only one way, when in fact, Western culture is enriched by inputs from other world cultures.
This theory sees the global media as beneficial because it is mainly responsible for diffusing the different cultural styles around the world and for creating new global hybrid styles in fashion, food, music and lifestyle.
This theory is a middle ground between globalists and Marxists. They think that globalisation should be understood as a complex set of interconnecting relationships through which power is mostly exercised indirectly.