Abstract
This essay engages two issues: (1) the possibility of a theory of dependence that accounts for resistance and accords resistance by social agents causal significance in historical processes; and (2) the importance of culture in the resistance to social change offered by social actors. I understand dependent development as an historical process that subaltern classes resist and shape in their resisting. The practical consequence of resistance is that it renders the historical process patently open-ended. Throughout, my effort is to understand how superstructural representations fit with production relations as they are organized, lived, and contested. I conclude that cultural representations must be interrogated as active arenas of class conflict and instruments of either exploitation and concession or resistance and liberation.
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