ABSTRACT
The relative powerlessness of marginal peoples to control their destinies has led scholars of various persuasions – conventional development theorists, dependency theorists, World Systems theorists – to view them as passive objects rather than active agents of change. Yet we are beginning to get a different view, one that sees peripheral populations as active agents in shaping and controlling their engagement with the outside world, giving local meanings to alien ideas, institutions and things, and in various ways resisting them.
