Dependence

Dependence is often considered as a primarily negative state of being. It has gone from being described as a threat to individual self-reliance in early modern political theory in Western Europe to being a moral panic in political discourse across the world. Its negative connotation is particularly evident in the spheres of politics and economics, which this entry will focus on. Although anthropological theory has only recently made dependence a topic of explicit theoretical reflection, the idea has underpinned a wide variety of approaches throughout the discipline’s history. Given the tendency of anthropologists to stress the fundamental interdependence of human beings, they have emphasised that dependence is not always a bad thing and can even be desirable. They have also questioned whether or not we can neatly divide the world’s population into those in states of dependence versus independence. Lastly, they have considered the performative effects of ascribing dependence to some and independence to others. Ethnographically sifting through the different performative effects of ascriptions of dependence becomes particularly important today, as assumed states of dependence have become key tools in the management of populations across the world.