Latin American Structuralist School (original) (raw)

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009

Abstract

The Latin American structuralist school argues that the problems of development of the underdeveloped countries have to be analyzed within the context of the world economy. For this purpose, they divide the world into a ‘center’ and a ‘periphery’. The center or developed countries dominate the world economy and the periphery or underdeveloped countries lack the capacity for autonomous development as their development process is much influenced by their multiple linkages to the center. Thus, center and periphery are simultaneous and interdependent processes. The structuralist theory, sometimes referred to as the ‘center–periphery’ paradigm, challenged the validity of the neoclassical and orthodox theory of international trade, which argued that international trade would mainly benefit the developing countries. It argued, on the contrary, that the income inequalities between them increased as there was a transfer of an economic surplus from the periphery to the center through unequal exchange. The Latin American structuralist school, by contesting aspects of the dominant Anglo-Saxon and Eurocentric theories and developing their own historical, holistic, and structural interpretation of the development processes and problems of the developing countries, conveyed a more balanced perspective on the processes of development and underdevelopment, thereby greatly enriching our understanding of the world system.

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