Industrialization, Economic Development and the Regional Question in the Third World

Why, after decades of effort to promote industrialization and regional development in many Third World countries, especially those of Latin America, does industry remain polarized, and so many regions backward?. This book reassesses the problem of uneven development in the Third World. The pronounced geographical concentration of industry is seen as both an outcome of, and contributor to, the broader problems of industrialization and economic development. The author creates a novel theoretical synthesis, based on the division of labour in industry on the one hand, and the links between industrialization and macroeconomic development, on the other. Focusing on the case of Brazil, the book evaluates the recent history of industrialization and regional development policy in the light of this theory and in the light of the history of mass production and shows that a new model of production now becoming dormant in the capitalist world - that of flexible production - creates new parameters for strategies of industrialization and regional development.