The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: LElumalai Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_U Date:31/3/09
Time:21:34:50 Filepath://ppdys1108/BlackwellCup/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-
9781405132879/appln/3B2/revises/9781405132879_4_U.3d

sometimes targeting structural problems (e.g.

the ‘war on poverty’ of the 1970s in the USA;

the creation of the Social Exclusion Unit

in 1997 in the UK; seesocial exclusion),

while at other times attempting to change the

behaviour of the poor by reducing welfare

payments (‘welfare reform’ of the 1990s in

the USA) and/or providing additional funds

to those who are entrepreneurially inclined

(Midgley, 2001; Peck, 2001b). dh

Suggested reading

Auletta (1982); Gans (1995); Massey and

Denton (1993).

underdevelopment A term used to signify a

comparative absence of development, but

which is now less commonly used by scholars

(though it retains its popular, even populist

force). It emerged as part of a postwar

discourseoneconomic growthin thethird

world, where it functioned mainly as an

adjectival noun. Underdevelopment here

functioned mainly as a noun.modernization

theorists grouped together a number of coun-

tries that they described as traditional or

pre-modern. These countries had not yet

‘taken-off’ towards an era of high mass con-

sumption (seestages of growth). By the

standards of the USA and other ‘developed’

countries, they suffered from underdevelop-

ment (Hoselitz, 1952). Underdevelopment

here defined a linked set of states that

included: being mainly agricultural or rural;

being religious or even fatalistic in outlook,

but definitely not scientific; being poorly

served by roads, railways, schools and clinics;

and being beset by high rates of population

growth and poor environmental conditions.

The Prometheanideologyof development

was meant to change all this, including in

underdeveloped socialist countries.aid and

planning would be the handmaidens of the

transition from a state of underdevelopment

to a state of development.

We now see that many of the concerns

expressed by modernization theorists in the

1950s and 1960s reflected the anxieties felt

by US liberals (e.g. W.W. Rostow) and con-

servatives (e.g. Samuel Huntington) about

economic and political development in post-

war America. There was particular concern

about the strength of authority relations at a

time of rapid social change. These concerns

were allied to an extraordinary faith in the view

that all countries would one day learn to be

modern in the American way. Both Rostow

(directly) and Huntington (indirectly) were

active in promoting the USA’s war in

Vietnam in line with this secular faith.com-

munismwas a deviant ideology that had to be

defeated. peasants had to be pushed (or

bombed) out of the countryside, where they

were coming under the influence of the

Vietcong (Gilman, 2003). Significantly, how-

ever, a sparky group of Latin American

scholars in the 1960s strongly challenged the

idea that underdevelopment should be defined

as an adjectival noun. Andre Gunder Frank

(1966) famously declared that while all coun-

tries had at some stage been undeveloped,

only in the ‘Third World’ had some countries

beenmadeunderdeveloped. Frank, in other

words, moved to redefine underdevelopment

as an active verb. In his view it described not

an original state of virgin forests and wilder-

ness (see nature), but a grim landscape

of impoverishment that had been created

as part of the development of the capitalist

world system.capitalism, Frank suggested,

created development and underdevelopment

as two sides of the coin (seedependency

theory). Arranging countries on a straight

line from underdeveloped to developed made

no sense. It ignored the active creation of

their very different geographies by common

processes of unequalexchangeanduneven

development. sco

Suggested reading

Gilman (2003).

uneven development The spatially and

temporally uneven processes and outcomes

(socio-economic and physical) that are char-

acteristic of, and functional to, capitalism.

One of the most striking features of human

geographies, particularly those activities and

indicators conventionally labelled as ‘eco-

nomic’, is their unevenness at everyscale.

This is evident in the organization of the

global economy (e.g. the categories of First

andthird worlds, or core, peripheral and

semi-peripheral countries); at regional scales

within most countries (e.g. heavily industrial-

ized or finance-centred regions versus ‘laggard’

or persistently poor rural areas); within

metropolitan areas (e.g. ‘inner cities’versus

suburbs); and within many cities atneigh-

bourhoodand block-by-block scales.

neo-classical economicstypically regards

such unevenness as temporary, and assumes or

predicts that capitalist development (‘eco-

nomic growth’) will produce movement tow-

ardsequilibriumoverspaceandtime,leading

to eventualconvergence(cf. modernization).

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_U Final Proof page 780 31.3.2009 9:34pm

UNDERDEVELOPMENT