From the mid-1960s onwards, numerous Global-South scholars have advanced the term ‘underdevelopment’ to explain how colonizing powers and extractive corporations actively produce impoverished, so-called ‘undeveloped’ conditions through their extraction of materials, labour-power, and knowledge from the Global South (e.g., Frank, 1966; Rodney, 1972; Hickel, 2017).
I’m curious, how do such scholars explain why “colonizing powers and extractive corporations” failed to produce ‘undeveloped’ conditions in places like South Korea and Japan, whereas places that definitively kept out “colonizing powers and extractive corporations” such as China (from about 1950 to 1980) and North Korea were/are nevertheless afflicted with ‘undeveloped’ conditions?
Thanks for your comment. I’m sorry for the delay in my response. I’ve been on holiday since posting, and wanted to wait until I could reply fully.
There is an important distinction is between the terms ‘undeveloped’ and ‘underdeveloped’. Undeveloped is a normative contrast made between low-income, poorly socially provisioned areas and high-income, well-provisioned areas. In contrast, ‘underdeveloped’ is an activist term to refer to how an area’s level of development is actively reduced to facilitate development of an area elsewhere.
You ask about East Asian countries in this context. I’m no expert, but it’s important to bear in mind that the US financed a massive economic recovery programme in Japan during its occupation and later relationship with Japan, which intersecting with growth via the military-industrial complex during the Korean War. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle#Overview
In other words, it is not so much about teleology or whether a country was colonized in the past, but what the ongoing forms of extractivism look like. Typically, these have followed centre-periphery, colonizer-colonized relationships of neo-extraction, but they don’t always. For instance, the US allowed Eastern Europe and Japan control over their own economies, governments and protectionist policies following WWII, leading to a rapid return to high income levels and social provisioning, whereas in the 1980s huge swathes of the newly ‘independent’ countries of the Global South were forced to accept Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) by the IMF and World Bank when they entered recessions. SAPs were massive free-market austerity programmes that eviscerated government civil services and social programmes, removed protectionist policies to develop domestic industry, burdened countries with massive infrastructure projects that indebted them to the Global North, and inflicted massive poverty. Simultaneously, socialist reformers such as Burkinabe president Thomas Sankara who threatened debt cancellations and reparations were assassinated or deposed through Western-backed coups. Good sources to learn more about this are: Dowden (2014) Africa—see chapter on Uganda; Slater (2004) Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial: Rethinking North-South Relations.
So, what matters is the form of the extractive relationships, rather than past colonized status per se.
I’m curious, how do such scholars explain why “colonizing powers and extractive corporations” failed to produce ‘undeveloped’ conditions in places like South Korea and Japan, whereas places that definitively kept out “colonizing powers and extractive corporations” such as China (from about 1950 to 1980) and North Korea were/are nevertheless afflicted with ‘undeveloped’ conditions?
Hi Wei,
Thanks for your comment. I’m sorry for the delay in my response. I’ve been on holiday since posting, and wanted to wait until I could reply fully.
There is an important distinction is between the terms ‘undeveloped’ and ‘underdeveloped’. Undeveloped is a normative contrast made between low-income, poorly socially provisioned areas and high-income, well-provisioned areas. In contrast, ‘underdeveloped’ is an activist term to refer to how an area’s level of development is actively reduced to facilitate development of an area elsewhere.
You ask about East Asian countries in this context. I’m no expert, but it’s important to bear in mind that the US financed a massive economic recovery programme in Japan during its occupation and later relationship with Japan, which intersecting with growth via the military-industrial complex during the Korean War. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle#Overview
In other words, it is not so much about teleology or whether a country was colonized in the past, but what the ongoing forms of extractivism look like. Typically, these have followed centre-periphery, colonizer-colonized relationships of neo-extraction, but they don’t always. For instance, the US allowed Eastern Europe and Japan control over their own economies, governments and protectionist policies following WWII, leading to a rapid return to high income levels and social provisioning, whereas in the 1980s huge swathes of the newly ‘independent’ countries of the Global South were forced to accept Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) by the IMF and World Bank when they entered recessions. SAPs were massive free-market austerity programmes that eviscerated government civil services and social programmes, removed protectionist policies to develop domestic industry, burdened countries with massive infrastructure projects that indebted them to the Global North, and inflicted massive poverty. Simultaneously, socialist reformers such as Burkinabe president Thomas Sankara who threatened debt cancellations and reparations were assassinated or deposed through Western-backed coups. Good sources to learn more about this are: Dowden (2014) Africa—see chapter on Uganda; Slater (2004) Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial: Rethinking North-South Relations.
So, what matters is the form of the extractive relationships, rather than past colonized status per se.
Hope this clarification helps!