Globalization and the Postcolonial World

Abstract

According to Ankie Hoogvelt, this book is intended to "introduce students to debates regarding the development prospects of the Third World." This she accomplishes in very compact and richly documented detail. Indeed, there are so many citations that the lack of a bibliography is sorely felt. The book is divided into three parts, each addressing a broad theme affecting development and the Third World. The first considers the historical route of capitalist expansion into a world economic system by means of, among other things, the core countries' depredations of their peripheral colonies. The second treats the world economy's increasing internationalization and the retrenchment of wealth accumulation by means of strategic hegemony and economic regulation, especially by the United States. The final part examines the resultant situations in the four distinct sociocultural realms of the Third World, devoting a chapter to each: sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic world, East Asia, and Latin America. True to the spirit of debate she is trying to foster in her students, Hoogvelt challenges some of the conventional assumptions about human society's advancement under globalization. She points out that, contrary to expert consensus, the flow of wealth to the Third world has declined since the colonial era. Or, again, that world trade represented a greater percentage of world production at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the era of globalization, than it did at its end, when it was in full stride. Or, yet again, that much of the apparent increase in trade, especially ...