The Many-Headed Underdevelopment: Theorizing Second-Order Dependency

Viswesh Rammohan, Central European University

Colonial Urbanism is the dominant theoretical lens through which the history of cities in formerly colonized countries is often understood. While offering a very useful typology, it falls short of demonstrating the various connectedness between the local and the global in the context of colonialism. Borrowing from the literature on dependency theory and specific aspects of world-systems theory, and moving away from a typology-based approach, I argue that that the study of a city in a colonial context can be understood in terms of three interrelated factors and these are: i) The role of Empire and the processes of capitalist accumulation, ii) The role of the city within the colonized landscape and iii) The nature of capital flows between the local and the global. Using the city of Madras (now known as Chennai) as a case study and by making use of archival material on labour, infrastructure and capital, I argue that the colonized landscape cannot be considered as a singular entity but instead is a fragmented one, elements of which operate distinctively. By placing Madras within this context and elaborating on world-systems theory, the paper moves away from the typology of “colonial urbanism” and offers a novel way of looking at cities in the colonies historically. In doing so, the paper seeks to conceptualize the concept of a ‘second order dependency’ to theorize on the growth of capitalism and the understanding of specific cities within the historical conjuncture of British colonialism.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 122. Ideas, Networks, and Alliances in Revolutionary Transformation