Modes of Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Progressive Underdevelopment of an Extreme Periphery: The Brazilian Amazon, 1600-1980

Abstract

The demographic, ecological, and infrastructural effects of extractive economies differ significantly from those of productive economies. Analysis of underdevelopment in extractive export economies requires time-lagged models of the cumulative effects of the sequence of local modes of extraction organized in response to world-system demands. Such a model, organized aroud the predominance of specific commodities at different times, is derived from a critical synthesis of various theories of development and underdevelopment. The propositions in this model are examined through a case study of the sequence of extractive export economies in the Amazon Basin from the time of colonial conquest to the present.