Towards a political economy of urbanization in third world countries / edited by Helen I. Safa

This volume is an outcome of a panel on 'Urbanization in Developing Areas', organized during the Tenth Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, held at Delhi in December 1978. The panel was funded by the Foreign Currency Program of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., which has also subsidized the publication of this book. Urbanization has emerged as one of the major issues confronting contemporary developing countries. An attempt has here been made to bring a new perspective to bear on the urbanization problem in the Third World, particularly on the survival mechanisms of the poor. The essays examine the impact of colonialism on the economies of Third World countries; their present participation in the global capitalist system, i.e. their dependence on advanced industrial societies for capital, technology, export markets, etc.; their urban class structures, and the role of their governments in shaping the urban process.

About half of the contributors are scholars from, and nationals of, underdeveloped countries themselves. Most are eminent in their fields. The approach of the book is interdisciplinary, in that the contributors include not only anthropologists, but also geographers, economists and sociologists.

Helen I. Safa is Director of the Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of Florida.