Reconceptualizing autonomy: The difference dependency theory makes

Though now largely ignored or maligned, the legacy of dependency thinking remains to be claimed. Of particular importance is the way dependency theorists mobilize the logic of sovereignty as a challenge to the hierarchy constructed as a capitalist global division of labor. However, this embrace of sovereignty creates perplexities for dependency argument: though the basis for a challenge to international inequality, sovereign boundaries also contribute to hierarchy and its legitimation by demarcating states as essentially independent political‐economic units. The dependency critique exposes (although may not fully articulate) this tension, and points to the need to reconceptualize our understanding of the autonomy of political communities in more relational terms. This relational understanding of autonomy necessitates untangling the multiple functions of boundaries and reconfiguring territorial space, at least for certain purposes, as simultaneously global and national. Any attempt to retrieve the legacy of dependency theory in this way must confront the broader questioning or rejection of the political‐economic configurations of modernity associated with the recent ‘post‐developmenf turn of thought. Though appropriately chastened by the post‐development highlighting of local difference/autonomy, the lessons of dependency theory remain vital if we are, on the one side, to avoid the temptation to romanticize local difference ‐ redeploying boundaries as a demarcation of essentially independent (albeit local) units ‐ and, on the other side, to secure the place for a challenge to international inequality.