original [Wiley] The Myth Of Economic Development

This classic work remains one of the most incisive contributions to dependency theory in the Latin American context. While agreeing with other dependency theorists that underdevelopment on the Latin America periphery was structurally connected to the accumulation of capital in the advanced economies at the core of the global capitalist system, Furtado went further and argued that the very idea of development in the periphery is a myth, deceiving countries into focusing on narrow economic factors such as the rate of investment and the volume of exports to the detriment of their human wellbeing. Moreover, the costs of development in terms of environmental destruction would be catastrophic the planet: the idea that the poor in Latin America and elsewhere might someday enjoy the livelihoods of todays rich people is unrealizable in practice, and a attempt to generalize the lifestyles of the worlds welloff would lead to the collapse of civilization. Adhering to the ideas of development and progress is not only misleading: it is also a m of cultural domination that stifles creativity and blocks the imagination of alternative life ms that would be better aligned to the conditions of life in Latin America and elsewhere. This prescient analysis of economic development and underdevelopment in Latin America retains its relevance today and will be of interest to aone concerned with issues of political economy and culture in the Global South, as well as students and scholars in political economy, development studies, Latin American Studies and critical theory.