The Eurocentrism of dependency theory and the question of ‘authenticity’: a view from Turkey

Abstract

Dependency theory, which has always been regarded as the foremost ‘revolutionary’ alternative to the hegemonic ideology of Eurocentrism best expressed by modernisation theory, is equally Eurocentric and has been so from the beginning. The postmodernist perspective, where the notion of ‘development’ itself is questioned and its desirability is contested, certainly poses a greater challenge. The rise and decline of dependency theory may be interpreted in terms of the rise and decline of the early post-WWII optimism about the developmental prospects of the newly established Third World. With the failure of national development and the rise of globalism, dependency theory too has declined and ceased to be persuasive. By citing the Turkish literature on development from the 1930s and the 1980s and 1990s, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the rise of the notion of ‘authenticity’ as a critique of Eurocentrism is as universal a phenomenon today as was the rise of ‘dependency’ ideas half a century earlier.