Dependency

Abstract

Dependency is a basic characteristic of the operations of power in space between centers and peripheries. In dependency theory, the power accumulated by centers derives not so much from their own peoples’ efforts and innovations as from draining the peripheries of people, ideas, resources, and wealth. Power is then exercised by centers over peripheries in a number of forms: as knowledge and discourse, as capital investment and financial expertise, or as militaristic intervention and the occupation of countries. The peoples, institutions, activities, and states of the peripheries have a dependent relation to the centers – dependent meaning that their choices are constrained and their possibilities limited by their power relations with centers. While the geography of power relations may change over time as, occasionally, new centers arise from what previously were peripheries, critical theorists claim that dependency continues as a fundamental characteristic, a basic inequality in human, social existence.