Underdevelopment
Popularized, dominant images of underdeveloped states include those that have less stable economies, less democratic political regimes, greater poverty, malnutrition, and poorer public health and education systems.
As a result, the solutions brought forth by development experts and practitioners were squarely economic—failing to address the profound political and social contexts such as colonial legacies and Cold War geopolitics.
Crops that weren't previously prevalent across the globe, such as wheat, were being transferred and from the global north to south in massive quantities.
In order for dependent countries to keep receiving foreign assistance, the U.S. made it conditional for recipients of food-aid to adopt the whole industrial model of agriculture.
The West believed that hunger had the power to drive people to peasant revolutions, so food aid was used explicitly to fight the spread communism.
[4] While efforts were made to increase food security in poor nations by helping them move to being self-sufficient, the industrial model of agriculture that was exported to recipient countries had a complex system of necessary inputs.
Seminal economist Adam Smith surmised not only that a nation's prosperity depends on free markets, but also that coastal geography - easy access to sea trade - plays an important part.
This state of dependency is multifaceted, involving economics, media control, politics, banking and finance, education, sport and all aspects of human resource development.
"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.
According to Brazilian social scientist, Theotonio Dos Santos, dependence means a situation in which certain countries economies' are conditioned by the development and expansion of another to which the former is subject.
[11] Rodney also elaborates on his broader theory of underdevelopment and the issues of using the term especially in reference to comparing economies, saying "Actually, if 'underdevelopment' were related to anything other than comparing economies, then the most underdeveloped country in the world would be the U.S.A, which practices external oppression on a massive scale, while internally there is a blend of exploitation, brutality, and psychiatric disorder.
