Reaction Paper 3

Dependency theory, originating from Latin America during the 1960s, came as a critique of the modernization theory and aimed at demonstrating the theory’s faults and the negative consequences of its practice in the countries of the region, with the United States as the main political antagonist of the region at the time due to its support of authoritative regimes.

Dependency theory argues that TransNational Corporations (TNCs), which are overwhelmingly from the West, use the practices of “modernization” to keep full control over developing countries by making their development dependent on them. These corporations make the rules for everything that has to do with the market, the distribution of resources, the production and the labor, leaving developing countries little choice in how and on what terms they might want to develop. TNCs also undermine the individual cultures of the developing countries by creating a dependency on U.S. technologies and U.S. imports of media, including entertainment programs, creating a sort of “cultural imperialism”. This latter term came to use because of Western efforts to undermine the cultural autonomy of developing countries by imposing technologies that shape their social reality, their values and their ideas according to those of the dominant country, under the pretext of simply offering them technologies that would help them join the “modern” world.

The reasons for this discourse as proposed by dependency theory is that the West, and especially the U.S., seeks to continue a form of neo-colonialism for political and military interests as well as for commercial gain.

Dependency theory in my opinion nicely encompassed everything that was wrong with modernization theory. The monopoly of the West over communication technologies and any tools for the development of a country only increased inequalities between them and the Third World, despite offering the use of those technologies. It comes at a heavy economic price at the expense of the developing countries, and makes it hard for them to develop their own technologies, which I think in the long term would sink them further in under-development.

However, I think dependency theory has many faults. Its critique of “modernization”, while justified in my opinion, is too simplistic, focuses only on the faults of another theory and fails to provide a legitimate and viable framework for international communication. Dependency theory also assumed that U.S. imports of media being consumed by Third World audiences would suffice to establish new capitalist ideas and to completely undermine local cultures, which I think is too far-reached and greatly underestimates the ability of audiences to be anything other than passive. Although media consumption is definitely a good way of effectively exerting influence on populations, I do believe that strong cultural beliefs and practices, especially those established throughout centuries, can trump any new ideologies being spread at the end of the day.

All in all, I believe that dependency theory is right in its analysis of the negative intentions behind the West’s efforts to modernize other countries. I think the cultural imperialism notion is very legitimate as well, but I think the theory fails in the fact that it completely disregards local authorities and influences, as well as overestimating the cultural impact of the West over developing countries.