Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank, The

Capital & Class, Summer 1998 by Filho, Alfredo Saad

The Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank ISBN 0-8039-7260-1 (hbk)42.50 ISBN 0-8039-7261-X (pbk) 19.50 This collection of essays pays homage to the well-known dependencia writer Andre Gunder Frank, and provides a timely reappraisal of his work. Frank is one of the most important critics of the conventional (modernization) view of development. This book charts his intellectual trajectory, highlights his contribution to development thinking, and outlines his current research priorities. This is done in two different ways; first, through an interesting paper written by Frank himself and, second (and more conventionally), in seventeen papers written by other researchers. The fact that some are closer to Frank's own ideas than others makes a nice contrast. The book is highly readable, and some chapters make important contributions for a progressive approach to the problems of (under)development. The book also includes a complete bibliography of Frank's work, which many researchers will find useful.

The Underdevelopment of Development is divided into five sections. Section one has two chapters, which provide an introduction to Frank's ideas. Chapter two, especially, written by Frank himself, is quite interesting and deserves to be widely read.

Section two (On Development and Underdevelopment) includes five papers on the economic, anthropological and geographical aspects of underdevelopment. The best paper in this section is `On Development: For (;under Frank', by Samir Amin. In spite of this title, Amin is very much against Frank's view of (under)development; I also think that Amin's writings are more cogent and deserving of attention by Cd>C readers than Frank's-but that is another story. In contrast, the most amusing paper is `Developmentalism: A Eurocentric Hoax, Delusion and Chicanery.' In spite of its promising title, and of some interesting reflections on the bias intrinsic to the concept of development, the paper suggests that the trialectical method should substitute dialectics, because trialectics subjects dialectical claims `to futuristic potentialities/depotentialities critique' (p. 138). This is really beyond me.

Section three (On Peripheral Regions) includes three papers. Theotonio dos Santos reflects on the fate of Latin America and the origins of the dependencia school; Samir Amin discusses the unfolding catastrophe in Africa, and George Aseniero charts the development of East Asian countries. The latter is certainly the most interesting paper. Aseniero's insights on the importance of Japanese imperialism for the 'successful' industrialization of the East Asian NICs deserve to be seriously considered by CdsC readers.

Section four (On the World Historical System and Cycles) focuses on Frank's current work on the world system. In contrast with the better-known approach of Immanuel Wallerstein and others from the Fernand Braudel Centre, Frank holds that `the existence and development of the world system in which we live stretch back at least five thousand years' (p.42). Throughout this period. the world system has been characterized by capital accumulation (sic), (shifting) centreperiphery relations, and ascending and descending phases of the system as a whole. In this process, the centre of the system has shifted westwards from China to Mesopotamia, Western Europe, North America, and may well complete the circumnavigation of the globe by returning to China in the near future. In light of this fundamental continuity, the concepts of mode of production (in general) and capitalism (in particular) pale into insignificance, and the notion that substantial changes in the world system are possible (eg, through a socialist revolution) is flawed. Essentially (and doubtlessly doing great injustice to this sophisticated approach), nothing really changes very much in history, only the centre of the world system shifts. This is an interesting approach to economic history-but I really don't like the method used by Frank and his associates, nor the (conservative) implications of their analysis (in this respect, see Christopher ChaseDunn thought provoking critiques, especially on p.248).

In the most interesting paper in section five (On Social Movements and Social Justice), Gerrit Huizer considers the conditions underlying the rise and fall of peasant movements in the Third World, and the dialectics of domination of the peasantry by landlords and the state. This is a sober and illuminating paper, that draws on a wealth of experience to reach important and plausible conclusions. Other papers in this section include analyses of deviance (by Pat Lauderdale), women's interests in the development process (by Virginia Vargas) and a thoughtful, provocative and amusing (in the good sense) analysis of the conditions for progressive social and economic change in our times (by Wallerstein).

In sum, this is an uneven but on the whole interesting book, that will appeal to all those interested in a progressive alternative to the ravages of capitalist `development.'

Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, London and New Delhi, 1996, pp.xv 427.