What is...Dependency Theory?

Episode 26

Dependency Theory provides a crucial framework for understanding the persistent inequalities shaping our global society which extend beyond borders, influence global conflicts, financial systems, and work at the intersections of gendered and racialised oppression. In this episode, Dr Felipe Antunes de Oliveira (Queen Mary University of London) is in conversation with host Judith Koch (University of Sussex) to discuss Dependency Theory which is rooted in Latin American thought. Felipe's unique dual perspective as a scholar of Latin American Political Economy and International Relations Theory on the one hand, and as a career diplomat on the other hand deeply informs his critical approach to development discourses. Felipe worked at the Department of South American Politics of the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations from 2012 until 2014, he acted as advisor to the Brazilian Executive Director at the IMF from 2019 to 2020, and is currently on a secondment to the Brazilian Ministry of Finance working as Coordinator General of International Economic Cooperation. His latest book, "Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias" (2024, University of Pittsburgh Press) proposes a way to overcome the problematic binary distinction between development and underdevelopment. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation!

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe (2024). Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina. A Critique of Market and State Utopias. Pittsburg, University of Pittsburgh Press.

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe (2024): Dependency And Crisis In Brazil And Argentina. Progress in Political Economy (PPE), July 9, 2024.

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe & Kvangraven, Ingrid H. (2023). Back to Dakar: Decolonizing international political economy through dependency theory. Review of International Political Economy, 30(5), 1676–1700. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2023.2169322

Reis, Nadine, & Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe (2021). Peripheral financialization and the transformation of dependency: a view from Latin America. Review of International Political Economy, 30(2), 511–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2021.2013290

Antunes de Oliveira, F. (2020). Development for whom? Beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. J Int Relat Dev 23, 924–946. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-019-00173-9

Fajardo, M. 2021. The world that Latin America created: The United Nations economic commission for Latin America in the development era (Vol. 192). Harvard University Press.

Marini, Ruy Mauro (2022): The Dialectics of Dependency.edt. by Amanda Latimer and Jaime Osorio.Translated by Amanda Latimer. NY, Monthly Review Press.

Villegas Plá, B. (2023): Dependency theory meets feminist economics: a research agenda. Third World Quarterly, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2292176