The Dependency Movement: Scholarship and Politics in Development Studies

Should scholarship be insulated from political forces or willingly and intentionally subordinated to them? This basic question is at the heart of Robert Packenham's study of dependency theory, its influences, sources and implications. In the late 1960s dominant theories of Third World development, most of them rooted in the liberal tradition of Locke, Adam Smith, and Weber, were challenged by writers from Latin America and elsewhere. Blending Marxism and nationalism, their dependency ideas - holistic, utopian, politicized - entered the mainstream and in time transformed a number of scholarly fields, including Latin American and African studies and comparative sociology. "The Dependency Movement" traces this development and explores its ramifications. Drawing on the most influential texts and neglected sources in Portuguese and Spanish, Packenham describes the origins, substantive claims, and methods of various dependency theories. He analyzes the movement comparatively and sociologically as a significant episode in inter-American and North-South cultural relations. In his account, the positive intellectual contributions of dependency ideas, as well as their role in the costly politicization of US scholarship, become evident and comprehensible.

"The Dependency Movement ...offers a devastating analysis of dependency theory that is based on a solid bed of facts, quotations, and citations; and it proceeds to its task of demolition with relentless logic. Every inconsistency, every facile assumption, every unsupported assertion, and every dishonest intellectual dodge employed by the leading "dependentistas" is brought under Packenham's pitiless microscope...The book should be read widely, not only as a critique...but as a model of how to analyze texts carefully.

"The Dependency Movement ..".offers a devastating analysis of dependency theory that is based on a solid bed of facts, quotations, and citations; and it proceeds to its task of demolition with relentless logic. Every inconsistency, every facile assumption, every unsupported assertion, and every dishonest intellectual dodge employed by the leading "dependentistas" is brought under Packenham's pitiless microscope...The book should be read widely, not only as a critique...but as a model of how to analyze texts carefully. -- Paul H. Lewis "Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs"

under Packenham's pitiless microscope...The book should be read widely, not only as a critique...but as a model of how to analyze texts carefully.

The Dependency Movement ...offers a devastating analysis of dependency theory that is based on a solid bed of facts, quotations, and citations; and it proceeds to its task of demolition with relentless logic. Every inconsistency, every facile assumption, every unsupported assertion, and every dishonest intellectual dodge employed by the leading dependentistas is brought under Packenham's pitiless microscope...The book should be read widely, not only as a critique...but as a model of how to analyze texts carefully.

A fascinating, relentless and extensively documented look at the politicization of the American academic community and what [the author] sees as its Marxist roots...It exposes many of the follies and hypocrisies within the Latin Americanist precinct. -- Kenneth Maxwell "Foreign Affairs"

"The Dependency Movement,.".offers a devastating analysis of dependency theory that is based on a solid bed of facts, quotations, and citations; and it proceeds to its task of demolition with relentless logic. Every inconsistency, every facile assumption, every unsupported assertion, and every dishonest intellectual dodge employed by the leading "dependentistas" is brought under Packenham's pitiless microscope...The book should be read widely, not only as a critique...but as a model of how to analyze texts carefully. -- Paul H. Lewis "Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs"

"The Dependency Movement "...offers a devastating analysis of dependency theory that is based on a solid bed of facts, quotations, and citations; and it proceeds to its task of demolition with relentless logic. Every inconsistency, every facile assumption, every unsupported assertion, and every dishonest intellectual dodge employed by the leading "dependentistas" is brought under Packenham's pitiless microscope...The book should be read widely, not only as a critique...but as a model of how to analyze texts carefully. -- Paul H. Lewis "Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs"