Mario Barrera’s Race and Class in the Southwest, analyzes Chicano inequality in the North American Southwest from economic, social, political and historical perspectives (Lillydahl 1980:439). The majority of this work is a historical outline of the Chicano experience followed by a critique of existing racial inequality theories and concluded with Barrera’s own theory that synthesizes internal colonialism and class segmentation theories. Written in 1979, this book remains a major contribution to the understanding of the Chicano experience and represents a turning point in the development of Chicano studies (Almaguer 1981:30).
The Mexican-American War concluded in 1848 awarding the United States a terrestrial expanse we now call the Southwest which includes present day Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California. At the time of US annexation, scores of Mexican nationals, Native Americans and “Mestizos” occupied the area living mainly as pastoralists, subsistence farmers and nomads. Once the land title transitioned from Mexican to American hands, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and among other things, ensured that the occupants of the territory would have a claim to their land. These populations, living in their traditional lands suddenly under different ownership, are what Barrera refers to as “Chicanos”(Barrera 1979:4).
Soon after the termination of the war, the treaty’s land ownership stipulation was short lived and a process of land transition from Mexican to Anglo hands began in earnest. Due to greater familiarity with language and laws (among other factors), Anglo capitalist and land speculators migrating to the area were in perfect position to dispossess Chicanos from the lands they had previously controlled (Barrera 1979:33). Class status, changing population densities and geographic isolation all played a role in the rate of dispossession across the territory. While the pace was varied the general trend was consistent (Barrera 1979:18).
The result of this land transfer is multi-fold; dispossession of traditional lands upset the cultural conditions of the region, disrupted the economic system that connected villages and towns, impaired local governances and placed the existing population into a subordinate position within a new structure.
Land transfer and a subordinate position in a new society led directly to the creation of a labor system that further perpetuated the downward mobility of this increasingly exploited population. Much of Race and Class in the Southwest is dedicated to the causation and description of what Barrera refers to as a colonial labor system. “A colonial labor system exists where the labor force is segmented along ethnic and/or racial lines, and one or more of the segments is systematically maintained in a subordinate position” (Barrera 1979:39).
The new labor system of the Southwest was in direct reaction to the transfer of land and an upswing in the economy due to exploitation of land via intensive agriculture, mining and railroad construction. First, the new opportunity of the Southwest further hastened the displacement of Chicanos as greater numbers of Anglos moved to grab hold of the economic momentum. Next, displaced Chicanos then entered the labor market out of necessity and in disadvantaged positions (Barrera 1979:35). For agriculture, a system of subsistence quickly gave way to commercial enterprise and Chicanos found themselves leaving their family farms (that families engaged in for generations) for a labor force, working for wages. In mining, Chicanos founds themselves working familiar jobs for unfamiliar ownership among a large labor force designed to restrict their mobility and hold them in powerless positions. The transcontinental railroads brought in new minority populations that competed directly with Chicanos for rail labor jobs. Black, Chinese and Japanese laborers all migrated to the area to support rail and formed part of the racially stratified labor system.
Barrera offers five aspects of the labor system that independently, and in aggregate, served to hold minority populations in a system that benefited employers at the detriment of the labor force. They are labor repression, the dual wage system, occupational stratification, Chicanos as reserve labor force and the buffer role (Barrera 1979:40).
Labor repression as a concept is summed up best by Barrera’s example of mining companies in Arizona. Scores of Chicanos moved to relatively remote locations to take mining jobs. Due to the location, goods and services were only supplied by a company store. Workers, Chicanos among them, had little choice but to buy everything (food, gas, etc.) from this store. The company paid extremely low wages and held prices high enough to recoup the wages they paid out. Low wages and high cost of living pushed labor populations into perpetual debt. This system of labor repression was also used in one form or another on ranches, farms and businesses (Barrera 1979:41).
The dual wage system is the practice of paying one wage to minority workers and another to non-minority workers who perform the same task. Often termed “cheap labor,” the dual wage system is still pervasive today. An example in the Arizona mines illustrates this concept in action. The Arizona mine of Santa Rita, around 1870, paid Mexican miners from $12 a month to $1 a day, depending on the job, plus a weekly ration of flour. American workers, for the same positions, received $30-$70 a month plus board (Barrera 1979:42). It is important to note that citizenship played no role. The “Mexican Rate” applied to Mexican-Americans, resident Mexican aliens and Mexican nationals. Segregating the Mexican and Anglo workers, whose communities were then further segregated by downstream socioeconomic status, made it easier for companies to practice their discriminatory policies while fostering social divisions (Barrera 1979:40).
Occupational stratification is the practice of classifying certain jobs as suited for minorities and others as suited for non-minorities (Barrera 1979:43). The result is that minority works become concentrated into a certain classification of work that are most often the least desirable jobs. Racially stratified labor was prevalent in every important economic sector of the Southwest. Occupational stratification increased with mechanization; many of the labor positions were replaced, and new positions created by the innovations went to Anglos. A discriminatory wage system teamed with occupational stratification to marginalize Chicano laborers to restrictive menial and dangerous jobs.
Chicanos as a reserve labor force provided two functions; it gave elasticity to the labor force and provided employers leverage in bargaining or controlling existing workers. Elasticity is advantageous because as the demand for labor increases the work force can be expanded without having to compete for labor and drive up wages. As for leverage, since the work is often menial, workers are expendable and employers can reduce their power (Barrera 1979:47). This is most commonly seen when employers use migrant labor to break worker strikes.
Minorities as buffers provided employers with shock absorbers to the ebbs and flows of the economy. Minority workers were always the last hired and the first fired. Again advantageous for employers, minority workers were powerless, unable to defend themselves and therefore were expendable. This helped reduce discontent among non-minority workers who had power, choices and organizations to defend them (Barrera 1979:48).
Overall, business owners created a colonial labor force to keep costs to a minimum - a racially segmented labor force allowed greater control of the labor supply, a reserve labor force accounted for the elasticity in business and furthermore, the reserves allowed the employers to apply downward pressure on wages across the board while simultaneously thwarting worker strikes. Finally the use of buffer workers served to pacify non-minority workers in periods of excess labor (Barrera 1979:50). Most importantly, segmenting the labor force created divisions among the workers and helped prevent the emergence of class consciousness among them. They were truly divided and conquered.
Mario Barrera, after an exhaustive history lesson, introduced competing theories of racial inequality that fall into three major categories: deficiency theories, bias theories and structural discrimination theories.
Deficiency theory is “the contention that racial minorities occupy an inferior economic, social and political status because of some deficiency within the minority groups themselves” (Barrera 1979:174). There are three subsections of deficiency theory, each based on a particular type; biological, structural and cultural. Biological deficiency has been discredited completely. More commonly cited are structural and cultural deficiencies, however, each have fatal flaws according to Barrera. Structural deficiency, as a means of explaining racial inequality, has been unsuccessful as it does little more than identify certain intervening variables. In essence, structural deficiency is a symptom rather than an absolute cause (Barrera 1979:176). Cultural deficiency theory is a very difficult process. Barrera believed that the only approach to proving this is by taking an exhaustive cultural inventory of both the disadvantaged group and the majority non-disadvantaged for comparison. Any degree of plausibility would come only after the positive and negative traits of both groups were established and a clear balance in favor of one group emerged (Barrera 1979:180). According to Barrera, this has simply not been done.
Bias theories put the onus on the majority versus the minority population. Prejudice and discrimination are the main players as unequal status is a function of racial discrimination that is a product of white prejudice (Barrera 1979:182). Barrera saw these theories as incomplete rather than wrong. Generally, these theories only address racial prejudice and do not pursue its origin and lacks any historical perspective.
Theories that fall under the structural discrimination category attempt to locate the source of minority disadvantage in the social structure of society. Structure in this case refers to the regular patterns of human interaction. These theories see discrimination built into the structure. They do not locate the ultimate source of racial discriminations, rather, they look for how the structure perpetuates it (Barrera 1979:184).
Barrera combined competing racial inequality theories with the historical record to formulate his own theory. The synthesis of internal colonialism and class segmentation approaches creates the core of his theory (for which there is no title). These approaches, according to Barrera, are the most comprehensive and accurately reflect historical patterns of persistent racial inequality. His model is consistent with a view of capitalist society as class segmented, in which the dominant class exercises disproportionate influence on all aspects of the system (Barrera 1979:212). In keeping with colonialism, the hegemonic system had been established to serve the interests of merchants, industrialists and would be landowners. Safeguards in the structure protect the interests of the dominant classes.
The system ultimately harms the entire working class, minorities and non-minorities included. In a racially segmented working class, each group operates on false consciousness; the system pits racially divided workers against one another and specifically, Anglo workers identify the manipulated minority workers as the enemy. Anglo workers perceive a benefit from this internal colonialism and collude to perpetuate the system. However, historical examination reveals that while Anglo workers avoid undesirable jobs, they suffer from the downward pressure exerted on wages by the segmented labor market, increased job competition and strike-breaks provided by the minority reserve labor force (Barrera 1979:213).
In this system, employers gain across the board; dual wage structures lower labor costs, buffers concentrate the impact of recessions on the most vulnerable and politically disenfranchised segment of workers, reserve labor forces allow for expansion and reduction of labor as needed while providing leverage against the demands of employed workers. Ultimately, the greatest gain for employers “has to do with the divisions that are created among the workers as a whole, since this allows capitalists to promote what is after all their ultimate interest, the perpetuation of class society itself” (Barrera 1979:213).
The Mexican-American War is often cited as the beginning of Chicano history and the Chicano experience. According to Barrera, the imperial expansion of the United States into the Southwest, and subsequent colonial experience of those that lived there, links Chicano history to other Third World populations of colonized areas such as Africa and South America. As the American dominant class asserted their interests, Chicano control of land was expropriated. Linked to both expropriation and the exploitation of Chicano labor, a system of class segmentation was created that bound Chicanos and other minorities to structurally subordinate position in the society. The segmentation line has painted the Chicano experience from its inception to the present day. According to Barrera, “The [future] politics of the Chicano community can be expected to revolve around both class and colonial divisions in a complex manner whose outlines we can only dimly perceive in the current period of confusion and redefinition” (Barrera 1979:219).
Works Cited:
Almaguer, Tomas
1981 Review of Race and Class in the Southwest. In Contemporary Sociology 10(1):27-30.
Barrera, Mario
1979 Race and Class in the Southwest. London: University of Notre Dame Press.
Dela Garza, Rodolfo O.
1981 Review of Race and Class in the Southwest. In The Journal of Politics 43(2):574-575.
Lillydahl, Jane H.
1980 Review of Race and Class in the Southwest. In International Migration Review 14(3):439.
Sheehan, Michael F.
1982 Review of Race and Class in the Southwest. In The Journal of Economic History 42(2):480-481.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Culture and Practical Reason - Marshall Sahlins
Marshall Sahlins’ provocative Culture and Practical Reason is a general critique that addresses the concepts and traditional distinctions between primitive and modern societies. The central purpose of this work is to dissolve the notion that practical reason alone can explain human action. Moreover, even in the realm of production and economics, modern society cannot be understood “without reference to the symbols and meanings that constitute its culture” (Swartz 1977:553). To achieve his end, Sahlins opens his work by establishing the limitations of social theory via a three-pronged debate beginning with Marxism, then British and finally French structuralism. Next, two anthropological paradigms are contrasted by outlining Morgan’s and Boas’s approach to practical reason and cultural reason respectively. Sahlins furthers his critique by establishing the problems within Marx’s historical materialism and its conflict with cultural analysis. Finally, he attempts to resolve the Western perception that primitive is to symbology as modern is to economy, by arguing that production itself is a cultural intention (Drummond 1977:83).
The first chapter in Cultural and Practical Reason entitled “Marxism and Two Structuralisms” focuses on a central issue of whether or not these approaches to understanding human existence can accurately and meaningfully describe “The West and the rest,” modern and primitive societies. He uses historical materialism and structuralism to begin his critique and introduce the problem of whether each of the societies are fundamentally distinct. And if they are, do they then require distinct social theories to explain them? Sahlins questions if historical materialism can offer an understanding of non-capitalist societies and if structuralism is capable of describing modern societies (Gudeman 1977:789). He sees modern and primitive anthropology theories tied specifically to Marx’s economics of modern society and Levi-Strauss’s structural analysis of primitive society. Sahlins concludes that the gap between societies does not lie at the feet of the societies, rather, the problem lies at the feet of the theories we use to explain them.
Sahlins furthers the discussion of practical and cultural reason in the second chapter by contrasting the anthropologies of Morgan and Boas. Practical reason conceives the cultural order as the codification of the purposeful and pragmatic actions of man (Sahlins 1976:55). Morgan sits comfortably in this camp and is credited with a utilitarian kind of functionalism (Leach 1977:560). He traces the lineage of practical reason with Morgan as the progenitor.
"Mind appears in Morgan’s theory as the instrument of cultural development rather than its author. Passive rather than active, simply rational rather than symbolic, the intelligence responds reflexively to situations it does not itself produce or organize, so that in the end a practical logic – biologic in the earlier stages, technologic in the later – is what is realized in cultural forms" (Sahlins 1976:58).
Malinowski is brought into the fold to illustrate the apex of this kind of reason because, according to Sahlins, he saw culture only as man’s apparatus to cope with the specific and concrete challenges that face them (Leach 1977:560).
Franz Boas is introduced as the contrarian to practical reason. His version of culture is not a reaction to the natural world but “a conceptual framework interposed between men and nature and proceeds to explore that framework along the lines of cultural reason” (Drummond 1977:81). Sahlins values Levi-Strauss for his attempts to make structuralism more dynamic and for his advocacy of meaning. Levi-Strauss’s meaning is generated from symbol positions within a symbol set and is the cultural approach to understanding human society and activity (Swatrz 1980:553).
This lengthy chapter also addresses the anthropological varieties of practical and cultural reason by contrasting several theorists from each side of the debate. Morgan, Malinowski, Murdock and Steward represent praxis while Boas, Levi-Strauss, and White represent meaning.
Sahlins dedicates an entire chapter to Marx to ultimately reinforce the concepts and opinions of the first two chapters, with slight derivation. “Anthropology and Two Marxisms,” drills deeper into the factions of cultural and practical reason within a Marxist scope. Parallels exist between the history of Marxism and the history of anthropological theory. For Sahlins, one “Marxism” is compatible to the concepts of culture of Baos and structuralism of Levi-Strauss. It is a refusal to reduce the social to the technological by means of economic determinism (Drummon 1977:82). However, the other Marxism steers in another direction. According to Sahlins, this direction is comparable and compatible with Malinowski. It perceives that categories into which the world has been divided is not by conscious social agreement, rather, “by a spontaneous endeavor to conquer the opposition of things” (Leach 1977:560).
Over the course of the book, Sahlins’ structuralist /symbolist/semiotic orientation builds and crescendos with “La Pensee Bourgeoise.” Through the examination of American food and clothing preferences, he identifies production as a system of cultural intentions where broad parameters exist and are shaped by the cultural process. Western societies cannot be understood without addressing the culture as a symbolic process (Drummond 1977:83). He argues that Western societies are only different from traditional societies because of the perception that the West is rational, utilitarian and needs conceived. Thus, Sahlins asserts, the true difference between modern and primitive societies is the symbolism of economy versus the symbolism of kinship as structural determinates.
Culture and Practical Reason attempts, centrally, to confront the relationships between “individual and collective, between praxis and consciousness, between social relations and symbolic structures” (Keesing 1980:130) – the essence of the practical versus cultural reason dialectic. Sahlins broadly phrases this debate with;
"Whether the cultural order is to be conceived as the codification of man’s actual purposeful and pragmatic action; or whether, conversely, human action in the world is to be understood as mediated by the cultural design, which gives order at once to practical experience, customary practice, and the relationship between the two" (Sahlins 1976:55).
Marshall Sahlins wrote Culture and Practical Reason in 1976. The majority of his research up to the writing of this book was dedicated to demonstrating the power of culture as a motivating force among people. He believes culture can shape and motivate actions and perceptions. His orientation to the symbolic nature of culture, and opposition to biological and economic determination has won him plenty of critics in the American anthropology landscape dominated by positivist thinkers advocating practical reason (Drummond 1977:81). Dr. Sahlins area of focus is the entire Pacific, however, most often in Fiji and Hawaii. Field work done in Fiji among the Moalans was used to illustrate structuralism in a primitive society in the first chapter. Sahlins utilized further field work, this time in America, in chapter four to elucidate his theory that production itself is a system of cultural intention.
Works Cited:
Drummond, Lee
1979 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In Ethnohistory 26(1):81-83.
Gudeman, Stephan
1977 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In American Ethnologist 4(4):788- 792.
Keesing, Roger M.
1980 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In American Anthropologist 82(1):130-131.
Leach, Edmund
1977 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In Man 12(3/4):559-561.
Sahlins, Marshall
1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Swartz, Marc J.
1977 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In Science 197(4303):553-554.
The first chapter in Cultural and Practical Reason entitled “Marxism and Two Structuralisms” focuses on a central issue of whether or not these approaches to understanding human existence can accurately and meaningfully describe “The West and the rest,” modern and primitive societies. He uses historical materialism and structuralism to begin his critique and introduce the problem of whether each of the societies are fundamentally distinct. And if they are, do they then require distinct social theories to explain them? Sahlins questions if historical materialism can offer an understanding of non-capitalist societies and if structuralism is capable of describing modern societies (Gudeman 1977:789). He sees modern and primitive anthropology theories tied specifically to Marx’s economics of modern society and Levi-Strauss’s structural analysis of primitive society. Sahlins concludes that the gap between societies does not lie at the feet of the societies, rather, the problem lies at the feet of the theories we use to explain them.
Sahlins furthers the discussion of practical and cultural reason in the second chapter by contrasting the anthropologies of Morgan and Boas. Practical reason conceives the cultural order as the codification of the purposeful and pragmatic actions of man (Sahlins 1976:55). Morgan sits comfortably in this camp and is credited with a utilitarian kind of functionalism (Leach 1977:560). He traces the lineage of practical reason with Morgan as the progenitor.
"Mind appears in Morgan’s theory as the instrument of cultural development rather than its author. Passive rather than active, simply rational rather than symbolic, the intelligence responds reflexively to situations it does not itself produce or organize, so that in the end a practical logic – biologic in the earlier stages, technologic in the later – is what is realized in cultural forms" (Sahlins 1976:58).
Malinowski is brought into the fold to illustrate the apex of this kind of reason because, according to Sahlins, he saw culture only as man’s apparatus to cope with the specific and concrete challenges that face them (Leach 1977:560).
Franz Boas is introduced as the contrarian to practical reason. His version of culture is not a reaction to the natural world but “a conceptual framework interposed between men and nature and proceeds to explore that framework along the lines of cultural reason” (Drummond 1977:81). Sahlins values Levi-Strauss for his attempts to make structuralism more dynamic and for his advocacy of meaning. Levi-Strauss’s meaning is generated from symbol positions within a symbol set and is the cultural approach to understanding human society and activity (Swatrz 1980:553).
This lengthy chapter also addresses the anthropological varieties of practical and cultural reason by contrasting several theorists from each side of the debate. Morgan, Malinowski, Murdock and Steward represent praxis while Boas, Levi-Strauss, and White represent meaning.
Sahlins dedicates an entire chapter to Marx to ultimately reinforce the concepts and opinions of the first two chapters, with slight derivation. “Anthropology and Two Marxisms,” drills deeper into the factions of cultural and practical reason within a Marxist scope. Parallels exist between the history of Marxism and the history of anthropological theory. For Sahlins, one “Marxism” is compatible to the concepts of culture of Baos and structuralism of Levi-Strauss. It is a refusal to reduce the social to the technological by means of economic determinism (Drummon 1977:82). However, the other Marxism steers in another direction. According to Sahlins, this direction is comparable and compatible with Malinowski. It perceives that categories into which the world has been divided is not by conscious social agreement, rather, “by a spontaneous endeavor to conquer the opposition of things” (Leach 1977:560).
Over the course of the book, Sahlins’ structuralist /symbolist/semiotic orientation builds and crescendos with “La Pensee Bourgeoise.” Through the examination of American food and clothing preferences, he identifies production as a system of cultural intentions where broad parameters exist and are shaped by the cultural process. Western societies cannot be understood without addressing the culture as a symbolic process (Drummond 1977:83). He argues that Western societies are only different from traditional societies because of the perception that the West is rational, utilitarian and needs conceived. Thus, Sahlins asserts, the true difference between modern and primitive societies is the symbolism of economy versus the symbolism of kinship as structural determinates.
Culture and Practical Reason attempts, centrally, to confront the relationships between “individual and collective, between praxis and consciousness, between social relations and symbolic structures” (Keesing 1980:130) – the essence of the practical versus cultural reason dialectic. Sahlins broadly phrases this debate with;
"Whether the cultural order is to be conceived as the codification of man’s actual purposeful and pragmatic action; or whether, conversely, human action in the world is to be understood as mediated by the cultural design, which gives order at once to practical experience, customary practice, and the relationship between the two" (Sahlins 1976:55).
Marshall Sahlins wrote Culture and Practical Reason in 1976. The majority of his research up to the writing of this book was dedicated to demonstrating the power of culture as a motivating force among people. He believes culture can shape and motivate actions and perceptions. His orientation to the symbolic nature of culture, and opposition to biological and economic determination has won him plenty of critics in the American anthropology landscape dominated by positivist thinkers advocating practical reason (Drummond 1977:81). Dr. Sahlins area of focus is the entire Pacific, however, most often in Fiji and Hawaii. Field work done in Fiji among the Moalans was used to illustrate structuralism in a primitive society in the first chapter. Sahlins utilized further field work, this time in America, in chapter four to elucidate his theory that production itself is a system of cultural intention.
Works Cited:
Drummond, Lee
1979 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In Ethnohistory 26(1):81-83.
Gudeman, Stephan
1977 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In American Ethnologist 4(4):788- 792.
Keesing, Roger M.
1980 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In American Anthropologist 82(1):130-131.
Leach, Edmund
1977 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In Man 12(3/4):559-561.
Sahlins, Marshall
1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Swartz, Marc J.
1977 Review of Culture and Practical Reason. In Science 197(4303):553-554.
Clifford Geertz: American Anthropologist
Clifford Geertz was an American anthropologist known for his contributions to social and cultural theory, his extensive and exhaustive ethnographic research and his rejection of functionalism. His approach and commitment to symbolic anthropology was provocative and brought to the fore the frames of meaning within which people live out their lives (IAS 2006). Geertz researched religion, specifically Islam, bazaar trade, village and family life and traditional political structures. His field research was capacious; in about ten years in the field, he conducted ethnography in various parts of Indonesia and Morocco and produced voluminous notes he referred to as “thick descriptions” (Hammerstedt 1999).
Clifford Geertz was born in San Francisco in 1926. Early in his life his parents divorced and he was raised by a foster-mother. He rarely saw his own parents but once a year and did not form strong bonds with either during his formative years (Inglis 2000:3). Growing up on a farm in Northern California, Geertz was aware that his intellect was the ticket out of his rural surroundings and into the greater world. The first ticket, however, was World War II and at 17, Geertz volunteered for the Navy. He was allowed to work as an electrical technician’s mate repairing radar gear on the USS St Paul (Inglis 2000:4). He narrowly averted a potentially bloody invasion of Japan, the first atomic bomb being dropped just before the scheduled invasion. Geertz emerged from the Navy in 1946 first to San Francisco and then to Antioch College in Ohio via the GI Bill. He received his BA in Philosophy and eventually moved on the Harvard where he received his Ph.D. in Anthropology (Geertz 1999). Geertz always envisioned himself as a writer and had planned to work in journalism while moonlighting as a novelist. He found neither feasible nor satisfying and stumbled into Anthropology only after encouragement from a number of former teachers. The way Geertz found Anthropology would be played out many times over the course of his career. When choosing field work, areas for research and even universities to work for, he was either in the right place, knew the right people or had the curiosity to put himself into the right position at the right time (Geertz 1999).
In 1952, Geertz was invited (in the right place) to work with a group of fellow Harvard graduate students in Modjukoto, a small town in Java Indonesia (Inglis 2000:55). Over the course of over two years in the field, Geertz gathered data, in his case thick interpretive descriptions, that ultimately led to the composition of his dissertation - a comprehensive analysis of Javanese religion in its social context. The Religion of Java, the result of this dissertation was published in 1960. After returning from his first stint in Indonesia, he taught or held various positions in academia and in 1960 took a position at the University of Chicago where he spent 10 years, ultimately as a professor. In 1970, he became professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton until 2000, then as emeritus professor until his death in 2006 (IAS 2006).
Geertz’ background was multi-disciplined; bits of philosophy, psychology and literature influenced both his approach and his final products. He was highly influenced by Max Weber and his flavor of anthropology was wholly interpretivist. Early in his early career, his fieldwork was spent in Indonesia and Bali. His interpretive works aimed to analyze the meaning of ritual, belief systems and art through the lens of symbology. He saw culture as a system of meanings embodied in symbols. And it was this system that provided the framework by which individuals assigned meaning and made sense of the world unique to their context. Although his early works were more traditional ethnographies that concerned the economics and political development after decolonization, he did distance himself from a functionalist approach that attempted to define culture by the functions they served (Yarrow 2006). Where functionalists saw cultural phenomenon as the bricks of structure, Geertz saw culture as the mortar, bricks and the designer of its own structure. Geertz also rejected the notion that social science could develop inclusive, sweeping theories about culture. He saw culture as the symbol sets out of which meaning was created. Societies faced different circumstances, in different times with different pressures and each culture needed to be treated independently (Yarrow 2006).
During his decade at Chicago, he further advocated symbolic anthropology. This approach saw culture as an established set of signs and symbols that shaped the experiences and life patterns of those within the culture. The anthropologist’s tool kit pulled from psychology, history and literature to analyze how people give meaning to their reality (McGee 2004). Geertz defined culture as:
"A historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life" (Geertz 1973:89).
Geertz’ approach to symbolic anthropology was interpretivist and his field notes came in the form of thick description. Because culture was based on symbols that guide activity, they obtained meaning according to the role they played in the pattern of social behavior (Geertz 1973:9). Culture and behavior were linked and could not be analyzed separately. Accordng to Geertz, thick description was requisite.
"The study of other peoples' cultures (and of one's own as well, but that brings up other issues) involves discovering who they think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it, something a good deal less straightforward than the ordinary canons of Notes and Queries ethnography" (Geertz 1999).
After much of Geertz’ fieldwork had concluded, he took a critical eye to the methodology of ethnography and the role of the anthropologist. Using history as a guide, he questioned how the discipline, born out of the post colonial West, could actually conduct objective research of foreign cultures. Furthermore, how could anthropologists, each armed with unique worldviews, accurately represent the meaning sets of other peoples (Yarrow 2006)? He concluded that the anthropologist had to be an interpreter of symbol sets by observing them in use. Cultural analysis was a process of assessing the meanings of cultural symbols, refining those assessments by including actors of the culture under analysis and then drawing larger conclusions from the agreed assessments. Fieldwork started as a conversation with the culture under analysis and the ethnographic data as an interpretation of that conversation (Yarrow 2006).
Clifford Geertz was an interpretive symbolic anthropologist influenced by Max Weber, literature, history, his experience in World War II and his involvement in the field of anthropology after the war. The war set his career in motion by way of the GI Bill. “The great boom in American higher education was just getting underway, and I have ridden the wave all the way through, crest after crest, until today, when it seems at last, like me, to be finally subsiding” (Geertz 1999). His generation of students, anthropologists and social scientists believed in their ability to influence academia and to change the world for the better; and Geertz was right in step. His dedication to fieldwork and exhaustive descriptions framed by symbolism influence anthropology as well as other social sciences (Yarrow 2006). For this Geertz is remembered, as well as for his persuasive and provocative writing regarding the nature of culture and ethnography. Although towards the end of his career he was discouraged with the relevance of social science, he advocated his field and academia to the end stating that an academic career in anthropology is “an excellent way, interesting, dismaying, useful and amusing, to expend a life” (Yarrow 2006).
Works cited:
Geertz, Clifford
1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Geertz, Clifford
1999 A Life of Learning. Electronic document, http://www.acls.org/op45geer.htm, accessed November 3, 2007.
Hammerstedt, Scott
1999 SYMBOLIC AND INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGIES, Electronic document, http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/symbolic.htm, accessed November 2, 2007.
Inglis, Fred
2000 Clifford Geertz: Culture Custom and Ethics. Cambridge UK: Policy Press.
Institute for Advanced Study
2006 Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), Electronic document, http://www.ias.edu/newsroom/announcements/view/geertz-1926-2006.html, accessed November 2, 2007.
McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms
2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Yarrow, Andrew
2006 Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80, Electronic document, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/obituaries/01geertz.html?_r=2&oref=slogin &oref=login, accessed November 4, 2007.
Clifford Geertz was born in San Francisco in 1926. Early in his life his parents divorced and he was raised by a foster-mother. He rarely saw his own parents but once a year and did not form strong bonds with either during his formative years (Inglis 2000:3). Growing up on a farm in Northern California, Geertz was aware that his intellect was the ticket out of his rural surroundings and into the greater world. The first ticket, however, was World War II and at 17, Geertz volunteered for the Navy. He was allowed to work as an electrical technician’s mate repairing radar gear on the USS St Paul (Inglis 2000:4). He narrowly averted a potentially bloody invasion of Japan, the first atomic bomb being dropped just before the scheduled invasion. Geertz emerged from the Navy in 1946 first to San Francisco and then to Antioch College in Ohio via the GI Bill. He received his BA in Philosophy and eventually moved on the Harvard where he received his Ph.D. in Anthropology (Geertz 1999). Geertz always envisioned himself as a writer and had planned to work in journalism while moonlighting as a novelist. He found neither feasible nor satisfying and stumbled into Anthropology only after encouragement from a number of former teachers. The way Geertz found Anthropology would be played out many times over the course of his career. When choosing field work, areas for research and even universities to work for, he was either in the right place, knew the right people or had the curiosity to put himself into the right position at the right time (Geertz 1999).
In 1952, Geertz was invited (in the right place) to work with a group of fellow Harvard graduate students in Modjukoto, a small town in Java Indonesia (Inglis 2000:55). Over the course of over two years in the field, Geertz gathered data, in his case thick interpretive descriptions, that ultimately led to the composition of his dissertation - a comprehensive analysis of Javanese religion in its social context. The Religion of Java, the result of this dissertation was published in 1960. After returning from his first stint in Indonesia, he taught or held various positions in academia and in 1960 took a position at the University of Chicago where he spent 10 years, ultimately as a professor. In 1970, he became professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton until 2000, then as emeritus professor until his death in 2006 (IAS 2006).
Geertz’ background was multi-disciplined; bits of philosophy, psychology and literature influenced both his approach and his final products. He was highly influenced by Max Weber and his flavor of anthropology was wholly interpretivist. Early in his early career, his fieldwork was spent in Indonesia and Bali. His interpretive works aimed to analyze the meaning of ritual, belief systems and art through the lens of symbology. He saw culture as a system of meanings embodied in symbols. And it was this system that provided the framework by which individuals assigned meaning and made sense of the world unique to their context. Although his early works were more traditional ethnographies that concerned the economics and political development after decolonization, he did distance himself from a functionalist approach that attempted to define culture by the functions they served (Yarrow 2006). Where functionalists saw cultural phenomenon as the bricks of structure, Geertz saw culture as the mortar, bricks and the designer of its own structure. Geertz also rejected the notion that social science could develop inclusive, sweeping theories about culture. He saw culture as the symbol sets out of which meaning was created. Societies faced different circumstances, in different times with different pressures and each culture needed to be treated independently (Yarrow 2006).
During his decade at Chicago, he further advocated symbolic anthropology. This approach saw culture as an established set of signs and symbols that shaped the experiences and life patterns of those within the culture. The anthropologist’s tool kit pulled from psychology, history and literature to analyze how people give meaning to their reality (McGee 2004). Geertz defined culture as:
"A historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life" (Geertz 1973:89).
Geertz’ approach to symbolic anthropology was interpretivist and his field notes came in the form of thick description. Because culture was based on symbols that guide activity, they obtained meaning according to the role they played in the pattern of social behavior (Geertz 1973:9). Culture and behavior were linked and could not be analyzed separately. Accordng to Geertz, thick description was requisite.
"The study of other peoples' cultures (and of one's own as well, but that brings up other issues) involves discovering who they think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it, something a good deal less straightforward than the ordinary canons of Notes and Queries ethnography" (Geertz 1999).
After much of Geertz’ fieldwork had concluded, he took a critical eye to the methodology of ethnography and the role of the anthropologist. Using history as a guide, he questioned how the discipline, born out of the post colonial West, could actually conduct objective research of foreign cultures. Furthermore, how could anthropologists, each armed with unique worldviews, accurately represent the meaning sets of other peoples (Yarrow 2006)? He concluded that the anthropologist had to be an interpreter of symbol sets by observing them in use. Cultural analysis was a process of assessing the meanings of cultural symbols, refining those assessments by including actors of the culture under analysis and then drawing larger conclusions from the agreed assessments. Fieldwork started as a conversation with the culture under analysis and the ethnographic data as an interpretation of that conversation (Yarrow 2006).
Clifford Geertz was an interpretive symbolic anthropologist influenced by Max Weber, literature, history, his experience in World War II and his involvement in the field of anthropology after the war. The war set his career in motion by way of the GI Bill. “The great boom in American higher education was just getting underway, and I have ridden the wave all the way through, crest after crest, until today, when it seems at last, like me, to be finally subsiding” (Geertz 1999). His generation of students, anthropologists and social scientists believed in their ability to influence academia and to change the world for the better; and Geertz was right in step. His dedication to fieldwork and exhaustive descriptions framed by symbolism influence anthropology as well as other social sciences (Yarrow 2006). For this Geertz is remembered, as well as for his persuasive and provocative writing regarding the nature of culture and ethnography. Although towards the end of his career he was discouraged with the relevance of social science, he advocated his field and academia to the end stating that an academic career in anthropology is “an excellent way, interesting, dismaying, useful and amusing, to expend a life” (Yarrow 2006).
Works cited:
Geertz, Clifford
1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Geertz, Clifford
1999 A Life of Learning. Electronic document, http://www.acls.org/op45geer.htm, accessed November 3, 2007.
Hammerstedt, Scott
1999 SYMBOLIC AND INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGIES, Electronic document, http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/symbolic.htm, accessed November 2, 2007.
Inglis, Fred
2000 Clifford Geertz: Culture Custom and Ethics. Cambridge UK: Policy Press.
Institute for Advanced Study
2006 Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), Electronic document, http://www.ias.edu/newsroom/announcements/view/geertz-1926-2006.html, accessed November 2, 2007.
McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms
2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Yarrow, Andrew
2006 Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80, Electronic document, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/obituaries/01geertz.html?_r=2&oref=slogin &oref=login, accessed November 4, 2007.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Andre Gunder Frank
Andre Gunder Frank was an influential and prolific social thinker, economist, historian, sociologist, activist and political economist. The majority of his research provided detailed analysis of the relationship between economy and society from the post-colonial era up to the turn of the century. Frank’s contributions to the development of Dependency Theory, The World Systems Theory, and the analysis of Underdevelopment are profound. He is known for his prodigious output, his rejection of mainstream economics and for giving meaning to the study of political economy. He is one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century and has been admired throughout his career for his dedication to the condition of the working class (Chossudovsky 2005).
Andre Gunder Frank was born in Germany in 1929. His family fled the country when Hitler was elected Chancellor, first to Switzerland and eventually to the United States where he received his undergraduate schooling at Swarthmore. After a circuitous tour of the United States doing odd jobs, he enrolled at the University Chicago where he earned a Ph.D. in Economics in 1957. His dissertation focused on Soviet agriculture. He considered “general productivity” by looking at output of agriculture over time compared to agricultural changes in measurable and immeasurable changes in input (Rojas 2005). This dissertation foreshadowed some of the concepts Frank would focus on throughout his productive career as an intellectual, educator and social activist. After completing his degrees he held lecturer and assistant professorships at Michigan, Iowa and Wayne State. He left the US for a long stint (by his standards) in Latin America in 1962, first working as an Associate Professor in anthropology at the University of Brasilia, then as an Extraordinary Professor in Economics at the University of Mexico. In 1968 he became a professor of Economics at the University of Chile in Santiago where he worked on reforms for the Salvador Allende administration until he was exiled from Chile when General Pinochet successfully toppled the socialist government and instituted a military dictatorship on September 11, 1973. From 1973 until his mandatory retirement from professorship at the University of Amsterdam in 1994, he held various positions at universities in Germany, the US, the Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Belgium, and France. From 1994 until his death in 2005, he held other positions at five different universities in the US (Rojas 2005).
In all, Andre Gunder Frank has taught or done research in departments of anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, political science, and sociology, among others, in nine universities in North America, three in Latin America, and five in countries in Europe. He has also given many lectures and seminars at dozens of universities and other institutions around the world in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch (Rojas 2005).
Frank has written extensively on economics, social and political history, contemporary development of the world system, industrially developed countries and the Third World and Latin America. His level of production is best illustrated by the following stats: he has produced over 1000 publications, including 43 books, 169 chapters in 145 books and 400 articles in over 600 issues of academic journals and newspapers (Rojas 2005). Frank’s output was for the most part, unparalleled.
Andre Gunder Frank’s influences as an economist and social activist can be traced to his studies at Chicago where he ultimately honed his approach to economics. His training in neoclassical economics under Milton Friedman resulted in the rejection of the neoliberal and late 19th Century mathematical approach to economy and society. Frank pursued a self-directed path to his degree that focused on the role political elements play in the development of economic theory, contrary to the Chicago school of neoclassical economics (Sommers 2005). Frank rejected the mainstream "stages of economic growth" and argued that poor countries were not on a path of sequential growth stages but were actually circling the drain of dependence. His analysis of serial poverty in his groundbreaking essay, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” was the first step of contributions to come in the area of dependency theory and underdevelopment (Guang 2002).
Frank has been credited as the architect of Dependency Theory. The theory, developed in the 1950s and popularized in the 1960s, seeks to explain the relationship between developed and developing countries as a dynamic interplay where exchange of goods, services and resources between countries ultimately benefits developed countries at the detriment of developing countries. Raul Prebisch, one of the fathers of the theory, put it simply:
"Poor countries exported primary commodities to the rich countries who then manufactured products out of those commodities and sold them back to the poorer countries. The "Value Added" by manufacturing a usable product always cost more than the primary products used to create those products. Therefore, poorer countries would never be earning enough from their export earnings to pay for their imports." (Ferraro 1996).
The difference between undeveloped and underdeveloped states, to which Frank has analyzed extensively, is critical to understanding the historical context and severity of the cycle of dependence. Frank defined undeveloped states as those in which resources are not being used. Underdeveloped states actively harvest their resources, however, are in a situation where the dominant state benefits from the their resources. In effect, the dependent states are dependent because they were integrated into the economic system only as “producers of raw materials or to serve as repositories of cheap labor, and were denied the opportunity to market their resources in any way that competed with dominant states.” (Ferraro 1996).
However, there are different schools of dependency theory that approach or see the concept from a different angle. Prebisch, a liberal reformer, Frank a Marxist, and Wallerstein a World Systemists, would agree to disagree on a centralized definition. There are three common features to which most theorists agree. First, the developed or dominant states (center) is advanced and industrialized, and the dependent states (periphery) are those with low per capita GNPs and rely heavily on a single export. Second, external forces are the drivers of economic activity within the dependent states, and include corporations, markets or foreign assistance from the dominant state. Finally, these relations are dynamic and over time are reinforced and intensified. In essence, a cycle is created where the dominant state continues to prosper while the dependent state become just that, dependent (Ferraro 1996).
Frank has been called a Marxist, however, it is important to look at where Frank and Dependency Theory deviated from Marx’s theory of imperialism. First, The theory of imperialism describes the expansion of a state while dependency identifies underdevelopment. More concisely, “ Marxist theories explain the reasons why imperialism occurs, while dependency theories explain the consequences of imperialism.” (Ferraro 1996). Finally, the theory of imperialism is self-liquidating while dependency relationships are self-perpetuating (Ferraro 1996).
Dependency Theory attempts to explain the underdevelopment of states by examining the relationships between different states where the inequalities of benefit are intrinsic to those relationships (Ferraro 1996). According to Frank, dependency is a result of the development of underdevelopment and is a zero sum game. Ultimately both states lose, only the dominant state loses less than the dependent state (Frank 1975:13-14).
Early in his career, Frank focused heavily on explaining underdevelopment and dependency economic systems and worked to dispel the beliefs of free market economists who argued that underdeveloped states were progressing and were on a path of full integration. Later in his career Frank worked and contributed to the formulation of the theory of the world system. He advocated for a reinterpretation of world history and believed the implications of our current economic perspective were devastating. He argued that mainstream economics was the result of five thousand years of history and not 500. He theorized that modern economics originated in Asia around the Silk Road and only later appeared in Europe after the rise of Western sea-power and the industrial revolution (dos Santos 2005). The end of his career was dedicated to understanding globalization and was framed by a 10-year battle with cancer. Up to his final breath, Frank reviewed and rejected parts of his old theories and worked to create new ones (dos Santos 2005).
Frank left an indelible mark on development economics, history and political economy. His theories were powerful and required adoption or a forceful rejoinder (Sommers 2005). Frank was a social activist, a polemic and a gentleman. During my research, I found much information about why he was admired and why his theories were criticized, however, I was unable to find critics of his personality, his effort and his dedication to the human conditions. For this reason, it seems appropriate to conclude with these two sentiments, written shortly after his death.
"What I loved above all about Frank was his unlimited sincerity and devotion. Frank was motivated only by a single desire: the desire to be of service to the working classes and subordinated peoples, to the victims of exploitation and oppression. Spontaneously, unconditionally, he was always on their side. A quality which is not necessarily always found even among the best intellectuals. "(Amin 2005).
"His death on April 23 leaves a hard-to-fill gap in contemporary social thought. But André was much more than a major social thinker. He was an intellectual who lived his ideas, a fighter for the truth and for the transformation of the world. Even though he was often wrong (like any human being), he was fertile and inspiring even in his errors. This is a quality that only geniuses possess. "(dos Santos 2005).
Works Cited:
Chossudovsky, Michael
2005 Lifelong Battle against Neoliberalism: André Gunder Frank, 1929-2005. Electronic Document,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=
20050718&articleId=703, accessed October 29th, 2007
Dos Santos, Theotonio
2005 Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005). Electronic document,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0505dossantos.htm, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Frank, Andre Gunder
1975 “On Capitalist Underdevelopment.” Bombay: Oxford University Press.
Frank, Andre Gunder
1984 “Critique and Anti-Critique.” New York: Praeger Publishers.
Ferraro, Vincent
1996 Dependency Theory: An Introduction. Electronic document,
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/depend.htm, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Guang, Lei
2002 Re-Orient: Andre Gunder Frank and a Globalist Perspective on the World Economy. Electronic Document,
http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/16_033102/re_orient.htm, accessed October 29th, 2007
Rojas, Robinson, and Andre Gunder Frank
2005 Andre Gunder Frank Official Website, Electronic documents,
http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/agfrank/, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Amin, Samir
2005 A Note on the Death of André Gunder Frank (1929-2005), Electronic Document,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0405amin.htm, Accessed October 22nd, 2007
Sanchez, Omar
2003 The Rise and Fall of the Dependency Movement: Does It Inform Underdevelopment Today? Electronic Document,
http://www.tau.ac.il/eial/XIV_2/scarzane.html, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Sommers, Jeffrey
2005 The Contradictions of a Contrarian: Andre Gunder Frank. Electronic document,
http://worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu/2.2/sommers.html, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Andre Gunder Frank was born in Germany in 1929. His family fled the country when Hitler was elected Chancellor, first to Switzerland and eventually to the United States where he received his undergraduate schooling at Swarthmore. After a circuitous tour of the United States doing odd jobs, he enrolled at the University Chicago where he earned a Ph.D. in Economics in 1957. His dissertation focused on Soviet agriculture. He considered “general productivity” by looking at output of agriculture over time compared to agricultural changes in measurable and immeasurable changes in input (Rojas 2005). This dissertation foreshadowed some of the concepts Frank would focus on throughout his productive career as an intellectual, educator and social activist. After completing his degrees he held lecturer and assistant professorships at Michigan, Iowa and Wayne State. He left the US for a long stint (by his standards) in Latin America in 1962, first working as an Associate Professor in anthropology at the University of Brasilia, then as an Extraordinary Professor in Economics at the University of Mexico. In 1968 he became a professor of Economics at the University of Chile in Santiago where he worked on reforms for the Salvador Allende administration until he was exiled from Chile when General Pinochet successfully toppled the socialist government and instituted a military dictatorship on September 11, 1973. From 1973 until his mandatory retirement from professorship at the University of Amsterdam in 1994, he held various positions at universities in Germany, the US, the Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Belgium, and France. From 1994 until his death in 2005, he held other positions at five different universities in the US (Rojas 2005).
In all, Andre Gunder Frank has taught or done research in departments of anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, political science, and sociology, among others, in nine universities in North America, three in Latin America, and five in countries in Europe. He has also given many lectures and seminars at dozens of universities and other institutions around the world in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch (Rojas 2005).
Frank has written extensively on economics, social and political history, contemporary development of the world system, industrially developed countries and the Third World and Latin America. His level of production is best illustrated by the following stats: he has produced over 1000 publications, including 43 books, 169 chapters in 145 books and 400 articles in over 600 issues of academic journals and newspapers (Rojas 2005). Frank’s output was for the most part, unparalleled.
Andre Gunder Frank’s influences as an economist and social activist can be traced to his studies at Chicago where he ultimately honed his approach to economics. His training in neoclassical economics under Milton Friedman resulted in the rejection of the neoliberal and late 19th Century mathematical approach to economy and society. Frank pursued a self-directed path to his degree that focused on the role political elements play in the development of economic theory, contrary to the Chicago school of neoclassical economics (Sommers 2005). Frank rejected the mainstream "stages of economic growth" and argued that poor countries were not on a path of sequential growth stages but were actually circling the drain of dependence. His analysis of serial poverty in his groundbreaking essay, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” was the first step of contributions to come in the area of dependency theory and underdevelopment (Guang 2002).
Frank has been credited as the architect of Dependency Theory. The theory, developed in the 1950s and popularized in the 1960s, seeks to explain the relationship between developed and developing countries as a dynamic interplay where exchange of goods, services and resources between countries ultimately benefits developed countries at the detriment of developing countries. Raul Prebisch, one of the fathers of the theory, put it simply:
"Poor countries exported primary commodities to the rich countries who then manufactured products out of those commodities and sold them back to the poorer countries. The "Value Added" by manufacturing a usable product always cost more than the primary products used to create those products. Therefore, poorer countries would never be earning enough from their export earnings to pay for their imports." (Ferraro 1996).
The difference between undeveloped and underdeveloped states, to which Frank has analyzed extensively, is critical to understanding the historical context and severity of the cycle of dependence. Frank defined undeveloped states as those in which resources are not being used. Underdeveloped states actively harvest their resources, however, are in a situation where the dominant state benefits from the their resources. In effect, the dependent states are dependent because they were integrated into the economic system only as “producers of raw materials or to serve as repositories of cheap labor, and were denied the opportunity to market their resources in any way that competed with dominant states.” (Ferraro 1996).
However, there are different schools of dependency theory that approach or see the concept from a different angle. Prebisch, a liberal reformer, Frank a Marxist, and Wallerstein a World Systemists, would agree to disagree on a centralized definition. There are three common features to which most theorists agree. First, the developed or dominant states (center) is advanced and industrialized, and the dependent states (periphery) are those with low per capita GNPs and rely heavily on a single export. Second, external forces are the drivers of economic activity within the dependent states, and include corporations, markets or foreign assistance from the dominant state. Finally, these relations are dynamic and over time are reinforced and intensified. In essence, a cycle is created where the dominant state continues to prosper while the dependent state become just that, dependent (Ferraro 1996).
Frank has been called a Marxist, however, it is important to look at where Frank and Dependency Theory deviated from Marx’s theory of imperialism. First, The theory of imperialism describes the expansion of a state while dependency identifies underdevelopment. More concisely, “ Marxist theories explain the reasons why imperialism occurs, while dependency theories explain the consequences of imperialism.” (Ferraro 1996). Finally, the theory of imperialism is self-liquidating while dependency relationships are self-perpetuating (Ferraro 1996).
Dependency Theory attempts to explain the underdevelopment of states by examining the relationships between different states where the inequalities of benefit are intrinsic to those relationships (Ferraro 1996). According to Frank, dependency is a result of the development of underdevelopment and is a zero sum game. Ultimately both states lose, only the dominant state loses less than the dependent state (Frank 1975:13-14).
Early in his career, Frank focused heavily on explaining underdevelopment and dependency economic systems and worked to dispel the beliefs of free market economists who argued that underdeveloped states were progressing and were on a path of full integration. Later in his career Frank worked and contributed to the formulation of the theory of the world system. He advocated for a reinterpretation of world history and believed the implications of our current economic perspective were devastating. He argued that mainstream economics was the result of five thousand years of history and not 500. He theorized that modern economics originated in Asia around the Silk Road and only later appeared in Europe after the rise of Western sea-power and the industrial revolution (dos Santos 2005). The end of his career was dedicated to understanding globalization and was framed by a 10-year battle with cancer. Up to his final breath, Frank reviewed and rejected parts of his old theories and worked to create new ones (dos Santos 2005).
Frank left an indelible mark on development economics, history and political economy. His theories were powerful and required adoption or a forceful rejoinder (Sommers 2005). Frank was a social activist, a polemic and a gentleman. During my research, I found much information about why he was admired and why his theories were criticized, however, I was unable to find critics of his personality, his effort and his dedication to the human conditions. For this reason, it seems appropriate to conclude with these two sentiments, written shortly after his death.
"What I loved above all about Frank was his unlimited sincerity and devotion. Frank was motivated only by a single desire: the desire to be of service to the working classes and subordinated peoples, to the victims of exploitation and oppression. Spontaneously, unconditionally, he was always on their side. A quality which is not necessarily always found even among the best intellectuals. "(Amin 2005).
"His death on April 23 leaves a hard-to-fill gap in contemporary social thought. But André was much more than a major social thinker. He was an intellectual who lived his ideas, a fighter for the truth and for the transformation of the world. Even though he was often wrong (like any human being), he was fertile and inspiring even in his errors. This is a quality that only geniuses possess. "(dos Santos 2005).
Works Cited:
Chossudovsky, Michael
2005 Lifelong Battle against Neoliberalism: André Gunder Frank, 1929-2005. Electronic Document,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=
20050718&articleId=703, accessed October 29th, 2007
Dos Santos, Theotonio
2005 Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005). Electronic document,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0505dossantos.htm, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Frank, Andre Gunder
1975 “On Capitalist Underdevelopment.” Bombay: Oxford University Press.
Frank, Andre Gunder
1984 “Critique and Anti-Critique.” New York: Praeger Publishers.
Ferraro, Vincent
1996 Dependency Theory: An Introduction. Electronic document,
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/depend.htm, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Guang, Lei
2002 Re-Orient: Andre Gunder Frank and a Globalist Perspective on the World Economy. Electronic Document,
http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/16_033102/re_orient.htm, accessed October 29th, 2007
Rojas, Robinson, and Andre Gunder Frank
2005 Andre Gunder Frank Official Website, Electronic documents,
http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/agfrank/, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Amin, Samir
2005 A Note on the Death of André Gunder Frank (1929-2005), Electronic Document,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0405amin.htm, Accessed October 22nd, 2007
Sanchez, Omar
2003 The Rise and Fall of the Dependency Movement: Does It Inform Underdevelopment Today? Electronic Document,
http://www.tau.ac.il/eial/XIV_2/scarzane.html, accessed October 22nd, 2007
Sommers, Jeffrey
2005 The Contradictions of a Contrarian: Andre Gunder Frank. Electronic document,
http://worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu/2.2/sommers.html, accessed October 22nd, 2007