Dependency and the World-System: Revisions Inspired By the Critique of Coloniality

In this paper, I'm going to bring to ISA's public of this session central aspects of my debate on the relationship between dependency theories and theories of the world system and their relevance for thinking about Latin America's peripheral modernity in the current context. This discussion is part of a book I recently organised with two colleagues, André Magnelli and Felipe Mais, entitled Dependency Theories in Latin America. An Intellectual Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 2024). In this text, we will see that the relationship between dependency theories and world-system theories occurred in the 1960s and 1970s as part of a broad effort to overcome the limits of the nation-state in order to critique modernisation theory. We will note that the difficulties in advancing the debate were partly due to the fact that the banner of national developmentalism was taken up by the military dictatorships with some success. However, these cosmopolitan critiques pointed to some significant changes in intellectuals attitudes towards the themes of development and democracy. In particular, we believe that post-colonial criticism has contributed to revising the issue, putting new elements on the agenda that are relevant to thinking about the emancipation of peripheral societies today.