Book contents
- Anticolonialism and Social Thought
- LSE International Studies
- Anticolonialism and Social Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Activists, Intellectuals, and Movements
- Part II Schools of Thought
- 6 Palestinian Anticolonial National Liberation in the Present
- 7 Genealogies of Auto-Centered Development
- 8 Anticolonial Sociology in Latin America, 1950–1970
- Part III Dissident Sociologists
- Part IV On Method
- Index
- References
7 - Genealogies of Auto-Centered Development
The Afterlives of China in Arab Developmental Thought
from Part II - Schools of Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2025
By
Book contents
- Anticolonialism and Social Thought
- LSE International Studies
- Anticolonialism and Social Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Activists, Intellectuals, and Movements
- Part II Schools of Thought
- 6 Palestinian Anticolonial National Liberation in the Present
- 7 Genealogies of Auto-Centered Development
- 8 Anticolonial Sociology in Latin America, 1950–1970
- Part III Dissident Sociologists
- Part IV On Method
- Index
- References
Summary
During the 1970s–1980s, “self-reliance” (al-i‘timad al-thati/al-i‘timad ‘ala al-nafis) or “auto-centric” was a central Arab (and indeed Third World) theory of development. Thinkers and institutions broke with models of import-substitution and export-oriented industrialization that dominated developmental planning in republics and right-wing regimes, stemming from notions of development based on integration with the capitalist world system. They created a model implicitly or explicitly based on the Chinese experience of agrarian reform, self-reliance, and sovereign industrialization as the necessary steps to rupture with colonial underdevelopment. These economists, sociologists, and agronomists developed anticolonial and anti-imperialist theories of development based on self-reliance vis-à-vis macroeconomic architecture, technology, agriculture, and industrialization. This essay offers a preliminary genealogy of those ideas, tracing the emergence of these theories across space and time, through the work of major Arab thinkers such as Samir Amin, Mohamed Dowidar, Azzam Mahjoub, and Ismail-Sabri Abdallah.
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- Anticolonialism and Social Thought , pp. 162 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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