ABSTRACT
Dependency Theory, more than a theoretical construct, is a way of understanding historically embedded, political-economic relations of peripheral capitalist countries, especially Latin American countries, within the broader context of the global economy. It is, essentially, a critique of the development paths, policies, and strategies followed in Latin America and elsewhere in the peripheral global South. Dependency Theory emerged as a critical lens through which the history of Latin American development, marginalized as it was by Western hegemony, could be better understood; the “development of underdevelopment,” no less. The initial theorization was a structuralist perspective by economists who were associated with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). This was soon transformed, and informed, by more critical dependency notions and the spread of Marxist and neo-Marxist critiques of imperialism (Chilcote 1984).
