Underdevelopment

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Underdevelopment is the state of an organism or of an organization (e.g. a country) that has not reached its maturity.

It is often used for economic underdevelopment, and then means deliberately created poverty by imperialism, including lack of access to health care, to drinkable water, to food, to education and housing.

1 Overview
2 Extended overview
3 History
4 Examples of Underdeveloped Countries
5 Theories
6 References
7 References
8 See also

[edit] Overview

Underdevelopment take places when some resources are not used to their full socio-economic potential, with the result that local or regional development is slower in most cases than it should be. As a system of self-reproducing hard-core poverty and stagnation, it is a complex system of mutually supporting internal and external factors that allow the less developed countries only a lop-sided development progression. It turning point on the industrialized world's jagged economic conditions and the alters in the formation of the international division of labor since the Second World War; consists of the division of the world into rich and poor countries as well as the inconsistency with in poor countries between their rich and poor population; and is complicatedly linked to the developing countries' deteriorating trade position.^[1]

[edit] Extended overview

The economic and social development of many developing countries is being held back. This happens because of the backward economies and social systems in which peasants and intermediate urban stratum are in the majority. Almost all countries that are in the process of developing suffer from unemployment increasing due to the increase in population. Their unequal trade situation stems from their dependence upon primary products (usually not more than three) for their export receipts. These commodities are often: in limited demand in the industrialized countries (for example: tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, bananas); vulnerable to replacement by synthetic substitutes (jute, cotton, etc); or are experiencing shrinking demand with the evolution of new technologies that require smaller quantities of raw materials (as is the case with many metals). Prices cannot be raised as this simply hastens the use of replacement synthetics or alloys, nor can production be expanded as this rapidly depresses prices. Consequently, the primary commodities upon which most of the developing countries depend are subject to considerable short-term price fluctuation, rendering the foreign exchange receipts of the developing nations unstable and vulnerable. Development thus remains elusive.^[2]

[edit] History

The separation of the world into groups of rich nations and a large group of poor nations have been plain as the nose on your face. The division of the poor nations between a very small group of wealthy persons and the immense majority of very poor peoples living constantly on the precipice of disaster is also clear. It is usually held that economic development takes place in a series of capitalist stages and that today’s underdeveloped countries are still in a stage, from time to time showed as an original stage, of history through with the now developed countries passed long ago. Even a unpretentious source with history shows that underdevelopment is not original or traditional and that neither the past nor the present of the underdeveloped countries resembles in any important respect the past old the now developed countires. The countries that are know to be fully developed now have never been underdeveloped in the first place, though they might have been undeveloped. ^[3]

[edit] Examples of Underdeveloped Countries

Africa is the second-largest continent on the planet (after Asia) in both land area and population—with more than 800 million people living in fifty-four countries. With a total land area of more than eleven million square miles, Africa accounts for 20% of the land on the planet; its population accounts for one-seventh of the population of earth. With this in hand this makes Africa the most underdeveloped continent known. ^[4] Third World, the technologically less advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, generally exemplifyed as poor, having economies imprecise by their dependence on the export of major products to the developed countries in return for finished products. These nations also tend to have high rates of illiteracy, disease, and population growth and unstable governments. There are desperately poor nations, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Kiribati, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.^[5]

Afghanistan Historically, there has been a deficiency of information and dependable statistics about Afghanistan's economy. The 1979 Soviet invasion and consequent civil war destroyed much of the country's limited transportation and disrupted normal patterns of economic activity. Gross domestic product had fallen significantly because of loss of labor and capital and disruption of trade and transport. Continuing internal conflict disadvantaged both domestic efforts at reconstruction as well as international aid efforts. The country today can be viewed as a more developing country it is getting better economically than it has ever been. ^[6]

[edit] Theories

Modernization Theory

Modernization theory is a socio-economic theory, also known as the development theory. This highlights the positive role played by the developed world in modernizing and facilitate sustainable development in underdeveloped nations, often contrasted with dependency theory.^[7]

The theory of modernization consists of three parts:

Identification of types of societies, and explanation of how those designated as modernized or relatively modernized differ from others;
Specification of how societies become modernized, comparing factors that are more or less conducive to transformation.
Generalizations about how the parts of a modernized society fit together, involving comparisons of stages of modernization and types of modernized societies with clarity about prospects for further modernization. ^[8]

Dependency Theory

Dependency theory is the body of theories by various intellectuals, both from the Third World and the First World, that propound a worldview which suggests that the wealthy nations of the world need a peripheral group of poorer states in order to remain wealthy. Dependency theory states that the poverty of the countries in the periphery is not because they are not integrated into the world system, or not 'fully' integrated as is often argued by right wing development economics, but because of *how* they are integrated into the system.

These poor nations provide natural resources, cheap labour, a destination for obsolete technology, and markets to the wealthy nations, without which they could not have the standard of living they enjoy. First world nations actively, but not necessarily consciously, perpetuate a state of dependency through various policies and initiatives. This state of dependency is multifaceted, involving economics, media control, politics, banking and finance, education, sport and all aspects of human resource development. Any attempt by the dependent nations to resist the influences of dependency will result in economic sanctions and/or military invasion and control. This is very rare, however, and dependency is enforced far more by the wealthy nations setting the rules of international trade and commerce.

Dependency theory first emerged in the 1950s, advocated by Raul Prebisch whose research found that the wealth of poor nations tended to decrease when the wealth of rich nations increased. The theory quickly divided into diverse schools. Some, most notably Andre Gunder Frank, adapted it to Marxism. "Standard" dependency theory differs sharply from Marxism, however, arguing against internationalism and any hope of progress in less developed nations towards industrialization and a liberating revolution. Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso wrote extensively on dependency theory while in political exile. The American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein refined the Marxist aspect of the theory, and called it the "world system." ^[9]

Marxism

Marxism, or Scientific Socialism, is the name given to the body of ideas first worked out by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). In their totality, these ideas provide a fully worked-out theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class to attain a higher form of human society--socialism. The economic, social, political, pseudo-scientific philosophy, theory, belief, or system according to Karl Marx. The theory seeks the removal of the notion of private property in order to gain control of the economic "means of production" by taking it from the bourgeois which is the wealthy for the benefit of the proletariat which is the working class.^[10]