From: David McInerney <borderlands-AT-optusnet.com.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: Dependency theory
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:17:20 +1030


Hi Andy

I'm wondering what you think of the work of Giovanni Arrighi in 
particular, especially his 'Geometry of Imperialism'.  I've had a copy 
of it laying around for several years but other priorities have meant 
that I've never gotten around to reading it, despite its 'classic' 
status.  Amin's work I've always found interesting, coming out of the 
Arab context.  I would agree with those on list who have said it to be 
Maoist, that's certainly true in some respect, but it doesn't diminish 
the value of it.  I've actually read quite a bit of Mao - I did several 
years of Chinese history and politics as an undergrad - and some of 
what he says is very interesting, especially the works written during 
the long war against Japan and the Goumindang.  Even some of his 
writing on dialectics - such as the transformation of quantity into 
quality, and his primary and secondary contradictions - suggest a 
Machiavellian strand in this thinking (which may reflect more an 
influence of Lenin and Sun-Tzu than Machiavelli, but maybe not) and 
also 'anticipates' (although I hate using such a term) Althusser's 
thinking on the conjuncture, especially 'structural causality', 
'overdetermination', and, especially, 'underdetermination'.  But to 
appreciate certain aspects of his analysis is not, I hope, to endorse 
the authoritarian character of the Communist regime in China (although, 
in many ways, it might be preferable to the authoritarian capitalism 
they have now, which is perhaps more Bentham's Utopia than Stalin's).

DM


On 03/12/2004, at 4:23 AM, andrew robinson wrote:

> "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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