09/08/2005
Poverty and the state in Latin America
(Open Democracy)Latin America’s extreme social inequalities are an obstacle to the stable, progressive politics the continent needs, says Arthur Ituassu in Rio de Janeiro.
Why
are there rich and poor countries? Why are there rich and poor
continents? Why are there rich and poor ethnic groups? Why are men
usually richer than women? An entire field of social science tries to
answer these questions, which encompasses academic disciplines like
economics, politics, international political economy, and international
relations.<>
In Latin America, including my own country, Brazil, a vibrant argument has focused on such questions for four decades. The pioneers of “dependency theory” in the 1960s, Argentinean professor Raúl Prebisch (1901-85) and Brazilian scholar (and future president) Fernando Henrique Cardoso, strongly advocated the idea that some regions of the planet were rich precisely because others were poor. For the dependentistas – represented later by the work of the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos (1926-2001) – this is an intrinsic quality of capitalism.
“Dependency theory” lost power in the last years of the cold war as some dynamic east Asian economies (the “Asian tigers”) appeared to break down the rigid global dichotomy between the “centre” and the “periphery”; but the issue of worldwide, systemic poverty persisted in Latin America, Africa and many parts of Asia itself.
A generation on, and after liberal policies and their associated doctrines have been tested to destruction, the search is on for a new model capable of understanding and accommodating the experience of Latin American economies in the context of new forms of globalisation. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has just released in Brazil a publication, Social Inclusion and Economic Development in Latin America, which presents seventeen case-studies of social development and excluded populations in Latin America – among the latter, descendants of Africans, indigenous people, women, the elderly and handicapped people.
In Latin America, including my own country, Brazil, a vibrant argument has focused on such questions for four decades. The pioneers of “dependency theory” in the 1960s, Argentinean professor Raúl Prebisch (1901-85) and Brazilian scholar (and future president) Fernando Henrique Cardoso, strongly advocated the idea that some regions of the planet were rich precisely because others were poor. For the dependentistas – represented later by the work of the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos (1926-2001) – this is an intrinsic quality of capitalism.
“Dependency theory” lost power in the last years of the cold war as some dynamic east Asian economies (the “Asian tigers”) appeared to break down the rigid global dichotomy between the “centre” and the “periphery”; but the issue of worldwide, systemic poverty persisted in Latin America, Africa and many parts of Asia itself.
A generation on, and after liberal policies and their associated doctrines have been tested to destruction, the search is on for a new model capable of understanding and accommodating the experience of Latin American economies in the context of new forms of globalisation. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has just released in Brazil a publication, Social Inclusion and Economic Development in Latin America, which presents seventeen case-studies of social development and excluded populations in Latin America – among the latter, descendants of Africans, indigenous people, women, the elderly and handicapped people.
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http://www.opendemocracy.com/democracy-protest/poverty_2739.jsp#