ABSTRACT
Víctor Ramiro Fernández, Luciano Moretti, Joel Sidler, and Emilia Ormaechea examine the divergence in developmental paths between regions comprising the Global South, with an eye toward understanding whether the recent transformations in world-system hierarchies will ultimately perpetuate the logic of subordination that has always characterized capitalist development or whether these transformations present opportunities to promote a new developmental model. Focusing on the role of industrialization, the authors argue that East Asia’s state-led industrialization allowed it to develop “a more inclusive socio-spatial pattern of capital accumulation” that, through the deployment of national and regional control over key functions in global commodity chains, yielded a structural power to resist the eventual subordinating projects of foreign financial capital. On the other hand, the absence of such industrial developments in Africa and Latin America explains their relative stagnation and increasing divergence from East Asia. In teasing out the inequalities between the Global North and Global South and within the Global South itself, the chapter aims to illuminate potential paths forward for autonomous development in the twenty-first century.
