Ted C. Lewellen. DEPENDENCY AND DEVELOPMENT:AN
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD WORLD.Westport, Connecticut:
Bergin and Garvey, 1995. xi + 272pp. ISBN 0-89789-399-9,
$69.50 (hardcover); ISBN 0-89789-400-6, $22.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Claudia Buchmann, Department of Sociology, Duke
University,Durham, North Carolina, USA

The stated goal of DEPENDENCY AND DEVELOPMENT is to
provide an interdisciplinary overview to issues of Third
World development. Lewellen likens the task to a guided
tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it is intended
to provide a background to a vast and varied subject and a
"mental map" for more-focused return
visits.
The book begins by addressing various terms
used to refer to the poorer nations of the world. After
explaining the origin of the term "Third World,"
its pejorative nature, and the inadequacy of other
alternatives (i.e., less developed countries, the
periphery, developing nations, the South), Lewellen
concludes that all are inadequate yet none are avoidable. 
After this insightful discussion, I was surprised that he
classifies the poorest countries as "the Fourth
World," since this classification perpetuates the
terminology he deems problematic.The rest of the first
chapter discusses features common to most Third World
nations -- poverty, economic dependency, soft states,
population growth -- and provides a clear sense of what is
to follow.
Chapter two contains a "brief history" of
major Third World regions (Latin America, Asia, the Middle
East, and Africa) which, while perhaps necessary, comes off
like a tedious history lesson.Major theories of
development, namely modernization and dependency
perspectives are the focus of chapter three.Here the
author is careful to distinguish among the variants of each
(such as the ECLA model, dependency theory, and world system
theory).This brief but lucid presentation is
well-summarized with a detailed chart of major paradigms
and concludes with a call for a greater synthesis of these
perspectives.Chapters four and five rise to this call by
focusing first on domestic economies and internal factors
and then the international economy and external factors in
facilitating or impeding development.Chapter five is more
cohesive than chapter four and includes one of the best
short summaries of the debt crisis and foreign aid to date.
These first five chapters provide the new student
of development with a succinct and well-organized
introduction to Third World development but also serve as
comprehensive review for the informed reader.At times,
the text gets bogged down in the tension between
generalization and detail. The author tends to list
numerous countries with little or no elaborationin lieu
of detailed examples of main points.For example, in a
discussionof unequal exchange and raw material exports,
eleven countries are presentedin less than one page. 
Similarly, four short paragraphs on land reform coverthe
experiences of eight countries.In other cases, statistics
are presentedfor the Third World as a whole without
acknowledgement of the diversity thatis masked by such
summary statistics.Neither strategy works very well.A 
more reader-friendly approach would have been to present
one or twocountry-specific examples in greater detail and
leave the categorization of numerous countries to charts or
figures. 

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The remaining chapters focus on specific topics --
politics, population, environmental problems and human
rights -- in a Third World context.Each of these chapters
could easily stand alone and they vary in terms of
coverage.Chapter seven on population is interesting and
inclusive while chapter six on politics is fragmented and
misses some major issues.Here, the discussion of strong
and weak states is severely limited and there is no mention
of the rich civil society that pervades the political sphere
in much of the Third World.Although the topic has been the
focus of much recent theorizing across many disciplines, it
is curiously absent from this volume.In chapters six
through ten, as in earlier ones, greater use of charts and
figures to present statistics would have aided the reader.
As a comprehensive overview to Third World
development, the book is largely successful.It
encompasses a wide range of theoretical approaches and
topics in a concise and well-organized text.Lewellen
clarifies terms for the novice but avoids
oversimplification in the presentation of most issues.For
this reason, DEPENDENCY AND DEVELOPMENT should appeal to a
diverse audience.It is appropriate for use in general
undergraduate classes on development as well as more
advanced graduate-level courses.
The book has two weaknesses.First, it only
partially achieves the stated goal of being "truly
interdisciplinary" (p. x). On one hand, Lewellen, a
cultural anthropologist includes a cultural perspective
that is missing from many development textbooks.This was
a welcome addition. Yet, the contributions of many
well-known sociologists of development (i.e., John Walton,
Alejandro Portes, Stephen Bunker, Charles Ragin) are
neglected in the text and are completely absent from the
suggested readings and bibliography.While an
interdisciplinary overview of the broad, multi-faceted
topic of Third World development is an enormous
undertaking, it might have been accomplished with more
disciplinary balance.
Finally, as guide for more focused study on a
specific region or issue the book falls short.The text
contains few citations for follow-up reading.Often the
author refers to "some theorists" or "a
group of scholars" without providing references.Some
sections cite one or two works repeatedly instead of
providing a variety of references on the topic. The
suggested readings provided at the end of each chapter,
although useful, do not make up for the lack of cited
material.They include too many general overviews or
reports (such as the World Bank's World Development Report)
and too few academic books and articles.Nonetheless, the
books strengths -- its comprehensive scope and
well-organized format -- outweigh these shortcomings.As a
result, it should find a place in many courses on Third
World development.

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