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TOWARD A SYSTEMS THEORY OF UNEQUAL EXCHANGE, UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND DEPENDENCY RELATIONSHIPS

THOMAS BAUMGARTNER (Whittemore School of Business and Economics)
WALTER BUCKLEY (Department of Sociology and Anthropology)
TOM R. BURNS (Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H. 03824 (U.S.A.))

Kybernetes

ISSN: 0368-492X

Article publication date: 1 January 1976

160

Abstract

This paper proposes a systems framework for the analysis of economic exchange and development. Exchange is examined in the context of a social system in which actors have differential control over resources and different action opportunities and positions in a structure of social relationships. Exchange activities in a social system have ramifications in different spheres (economic and non‐economic) of social life. We focus on those ramifications which relate to social differentiation in terms of power‐unequal or differentiated action capabilities and different structural positions of actors in the social system of interaction. This perspective on exchange leads to the consideration of factors important to the emergence and maintenance of systemic, uneven development of action capabilities and to unequal dependency relationships among actors in a social system. In sum, what we wish to do in this paper is to develop a more systematic model that indicates the mechanisms whereby initial imbalances of the sort mentioned above generate social processes‐non‐economic as well as economic‐which tend to institutionalize the imbalances and perpetuate them in a self‐reinforcing manner.

Citation

BAUMGARTNER, T., BUCKLEY, W. and BURNS, T.R. (1976), "TOWARD A SYSTEMS THEORY OF UNEQUAL EXCHANGE, UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND DEPENDENCY RELATIONSHIPS", Kybernetes, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 15-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb005403

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1976, MCB UP Limited

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