Cuadernos de Teoría Social

Back to Dakar: Decolonizing International Political Economy Through Dependency Theory

Ingrid Kvangraven, Felipe Antunes de Oliveira — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Whereas the field of International Political Economy (IPE) included a diversity of voices at its outset, histories of the field tend to marginalize certain contributions - particularly those from the Global South. The endeavor to decolonize IPE offers an opportunity to look back at IPE’s history, re-discover the marginalized voices, and imagine new possible futures. This article engages with contemporary calls to decolonize IPE and proposes an alternative route to do so by recovering dependency theory. We argue that dependency theory can be conceptualized as a peripheral IPE perspective that was committed to thinking from the Global South and to producing politically engaged scholarship just as the field was being formed. The article elaborates on the key tenets of dependency theory, contrasting it with mainstream IPE, and putting it in dialogue with decolonial approaches. To demonstrate the simultaneous non-Eurocentric, anti-colonial, and policy-oriented potential of dependency theory, we recover a foundational moment that disciplinary histories of IPE have forgotten: the 1972 Dakar conference, organized by Samir Amin, with the participation of leading Latin American and African dependency scholars.

The Open Veins and the Economic Process: Dependentistas' Networks and Narratives in Uruguay

Pablo Messina — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the cultural framework of dependency theory in Uruguay, focusing on two representative works: El Proceso Económico del Uruguay (1969) by economists from the Institute of Economics (IECON) and Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina (1971) by Eduardo Galeano. Through an analysis of the intellectual networks of the time, the article highlights how these works, differing in nature (scientific and literary), shared common intellectual concerns and influences in thinking about Latin American underdevelopment. It emphasizes that, beyond the affinities between their authors, their approaches differ: while Galeano uses testimonies, interviews, and a narrative filled with emotion, the IECON is characterized by estimates, statistical charts, methodological innovations, and a more technical approach. The fundamental theses of both works are also contrasted: while Las Venas Abiertas defends the existence of an international division of labor in which some win and others lose, the IECON advocates for rethinking the interpretive frameworks of economics. The article concludes that the success of dependency theory lay in its ability to combine literary dissemination with scientific production, despite the tensions between both approaches

The Marxist Dependency THeory as a Product and Foundation of a Revolucionary Praxis

Ayelén Branca, Maicon Cláudio Da Silva — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article explores the connection between theory and politics in the work of the main formulators of the Marxist Dependency Theory (MDT). Through their political activism it highlights how organizational experiences and critical debates gave rise to early theoretical insights later systematized within MDT's categorical framework.

Exile, Pedagogy, and Marxism: The Intellectual Journey of Tomás Vasconi (Chile, 1966-1973)

Christian Matamoros — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the following article we seek to clarify the process of radicalization experienced in the work of the Argentine sociologist Tomás Amadeo Vasconi. His works on educational themes developed at the beginning of the 1970s have been considered as the translation into the educational field of the approaches of the French philosopher Louis Althusser. In the research we have compiled the works produced during Vasconi's exile in Chile, between 1966 and 1973, which has allowed us to identify the passage from developmentalist approaches to the search for a Marxist theory of education. In this sense, we propose that Vasconi's intellectual production in the period is the result of the link between the theory of dependency and the debates within the European left-wing intellectual field.

Dependency Debates at the Center for Studies of National Reality of the Catholic University of Chile, 1968-1973

Mario Vega Henríquez — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The main objective of this article is to investigate the reception and debates generated within the Center for Studies of the National Reality of the Catholic University of Chile (1968-1973) by the dependency ideas and the work of its most prominent exponents intellectuals. The above, due to the condition of relative heterodoxy existing within its academic faculty, its profuse scientific production and the capacity displayed by this organization when collaborating with the Popular Unity government, both by providing political-technical cadres and by providing advice to public entities in charge of executing key areas within the socialist transition process in Chile. For their part, the ideas of dependency, which had become hegemonic within Latin American social sciences, constituted a fundamental tool for examining peripheral capitalist societies, whose relevance we aspire to establish as part of the unprecedented process of transition inaugurated with the rise to power of the President Salvador Allende, who made indispensable the need to develop a new process of accumulation of empirical-theoretical knowledge that would allow him to guide the changes committed to his government program through new analytical tools and responses based on contingency.

Memory and Future of Dependency Theory

Martín Arboleda, Francisca Benítez, Alonso López — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Crisis of the Human: Notes for a Debate on the Anthropocene

Rodrigo Cordero, Daniel Chernilo, Diego Rosello — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Chronicle of the International Colloquium “Memory and Future of Dependency Theory: Balance 50 Years After the Military Coup in Chile.”

Sebastián Aliaga Valenzuela — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This chronicle recounts the International Colloquium “Memory and Future of Dependency Theory: Balance at 50 Years of the Chilean Coup”, held in Santiago in August 2023. The event brought together scholars, intellectuals, and social actors to reflect on the relevance of dependency theory today. Originating in the 1960s–70s and later silenced by Southern Cone dictatorships, dependency theory emerged as a critical framework from the Global South. Presentations explored international political economy, Latin American intellectual history, and the intersections of memory, affect, and theory. The colloquium also included visits to sites of memory, highlighting the biographical and collective dimensions of dependency thought. Rather than a closed legacy, dependency reappears as an analytical and political tool to understand ongoing inequalities and to envision emancipatory futures. The chronicle underscores the critical revival of a tradition that continues to challenge contemporary realities.