Structural Predicament Of The Development Of Periphery Societies

The concept of edge society comes from the dependency theory, which is a radical school in modernization theory. Dependency theorists borrow the term "center-periphery" from Latin America structuralism theory. They believe that after the Second World War the developing countries had become appendages to the developed western capitalism, and were the periphery of the world capitalism system. This is the reason why the developing countries and areas are underdeveloped for a long time.After winning independence, Latin American countries restructured the political and economic systems of their own societies according to the western model since they admired the advanced standard of western material civilization and spiritual culture. The achievement of social order and the advanced status of nationhood was their priority of development. From the middle nineteenth century, Latin America countries started industrialization project. Since then, their development course alternated among the raw materials export-led growth model, import substitution industrialization development model and the new extroversion development model. Although in their modernization course, Latin America countries have gained tremendous progress, yet, none of them had gained the status of a developed country, in comparison with the developed western industrial "centre". All in all, Latin America is still an underdeveloped area, despite that they assumed that they are belonging to the western world.Latin America countries pendulum on an "extroversion-introversion-extroversion" course that not achieved expected result. Each model seemed to be reasonable and indispensable, gaining some achievements, but ruptured or failed in the end. The reason lies in the lack of institution to reduce the negative result of each developmental model.In explaining the dilemma of Latin America countries' social development, most scholars mentioned the confusion of policy. But this is not the whole reasons. The problem of Latin America countries is deeply-rooted in their social structure and institution. Looking at their choices of development model, it reflected a mentality of following the suit regardless of institutional vicissitude characterized by mimicry, dependency and fissiliry. This inevitably caused the unbalanced of economic structure and the duality of social structure, formed a rigescent institution arrangement and frail inaugurating-institutional system.Latin America's industrialization started earlier than most Third World countries, but they had not achieved desired result. Reflection on this experience, we can draw lessons and this would help us contemplate on China's drive for a social harmony and development society.