On the Periphery of the Anthropocene: Development, Freedom, and Nature

Abstract

This dissertation recovers and reimagines the concept of peripherality as a critical lens through which to study the contradictions of social emancipation in the Anthropocene era. Once foundational to post-WWII classical development theory, this analytical framework has been displaced by the rise of neoclassical and neoliberal approaches to ‘the economy’ and ‘society’. This conceptual shift—coinciding with the emergence of the environment as a major political concern—has resulted in a significant oversight: the neglect of how peripherality might help reshape our understanding of the relationship between development and sustainability. Against this background, this dissertation asks: How can we conceptually and empirically think about peripherality in the Anthropocene? By bringing together insights from the history of development thought, critical theory, political ecology, as well as the political economy of development, this dissertation argues that this concept offers a powerful analytical framework through which to problematise domination, dependence, and freedom in times of ecological crises. The argument unfolds in three complementary ways. In a first moment, I propose to reconstruct and reconsider key theoretical innovations made by classical development theorists—such as Raúl Prebisch, Celso Furtado, and Osvaldo Sunkel—in the 1970s and 1980s that contributed to the emergence of what I call sustainable developmentalism: an approach to sustainable development from and for the periphery. I demonstrate that this intellectual moment was defined by a collective and systematic (although not uniform) effort to explore the contradictions of the development process, the origins of its alienated and ecologically unsustainable nature, and sustainable and emancipatory development pathways. In a second moment, I bring these structuralist insights into conversation with critical theory approaches to alienation, dependence, and the production of marginality in capitalism. This effort aims both to strengthen the analytical and critical powers of the structuralist approach to peripherality and to reconsider its normative commitments in the face of ecological crisis. Finally, I provide historical and empirical depth to these theoretical propositions by using them to make sense of the intertwined environmental and development histories and contemporary political economies of Argentina and Brazil. In that last part, I discuss how both countries’ historical and contemporary development aspirations ‘with and against nature’—characterised by resource-nationalism, welfarism, and the quest for industrialisation—illustrate the contradictions of the pursuit of development, freedom, and sustainability on the periphery of capitalism. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates that rethinking peripherality offers critical insights for reconsidering the meaning of development in the Anthropocene.