Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 09:53:22 -0800 (PST)
From: andrew robinson <ldxar1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Dependency theory


"it considers the spatial aspect of 
capitalism as a world-system, rather than from the
temporal perspective 
of 'backwardness', 'development' etc.  I especially
liked the idea of 
'underdevelopment' as a product of capitalism, that
development 
produces underdevelopment or 'dependent-development'."

Yeah, this is what makes it attractive to me as well,
as a Deleuzian.  I wasn't expecting this idea to take
off the way it has on the list when I introduced it
against Sphinx.  Certainly the dominant uses of
dependency theory are statist (or localist), but I
find it very useful as a way of thinking about the
configurations of power in the world.  Because I don't
buy the IR model that power resides in individual
states, or the capitalist model that it resides in
consumers.  Foucault is useful but very situated. 
Hardt and Negri try to expand Foucault's approach, but
their attitude is far too "philosophical" and too
abstract to engage with specific situations - plus the
whole "juridical" angle is a distraction.  

So, the question in studying global geopolitics seems
to me to be how to situate the operations of power
(both destructive and creative, and especially in
terms of capture, enclosure, entrapment, etc.), as
they operate in "micropolitics", and how these feed
into "structural" political phenomena.  And here, the
images of core-periphery, of flows of resources and
power between these, and of the coercive arrangement
of the periphery to retain the dominance of the core
(almost as panopticon), makes a lot of sense.

Of course this reading is heretical, because I've
replaced the emphasis on economics with an emphasis on
power-arrangements and the overcoding or articulation
of powers in everyday life.  So I'm not getting into
long exegetical arguments with the likes of Tahir over
whether such-and-such author at such-and-such period
wasn't saying something which goes against my reading,
or which contradicts Deleuze, or which relies on
Hegel, or which is politically insidious.

I posted "With or Without You" to this list a while
back, and that includes a discussion of the world
system which articulates world systems theory in the
current context.

BTW, anyone interested in World Systems Theory would
probably like this online journal:
http://jwsr.ucr.edu/index.php

Andy


		
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