On a theory for the "third world"

[axis_of_evil]

I don't know if this is the proper forum to ask my question/s but I'll ask anyway.

I'm writing in the field of "third world history". I'm attempting to find sources which are able to guide me in the study of locales outside of the "west" which are normally given scant attention in dominant scholarship, and even leftist scholarship.

My general problem is a lack of sources to credibly deal with how we write "third world history" and how we may consider people in the "third world" as agents of change, moving them from the margins of history to the center. They are at the center of history anyway but the field of history like everything else reflects bourgeois interest.

I'll be more specific. I deal with North Africa and the Middle East. The scholarship on these regions, even when offered throuh the lense of leftist scholarship tends to offer a predominate role to the "west" or the coming of the "west" as a watershed moment in their collective history. The coming of the "west" is seen as bringing progress, and modernity, etc. I want to break from this tradition.

I've read Edward Said's Orientalism, and followed closely the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and his world systems approach. Though Wallerstein is far more acceptable than Orientalist scholarship ala Bernard Lewis etc, I still find that Wallerstein gives a dominant role to the "west" as making history while everyone else sits on the side line.

A side note: Marx's AMP doesn't work in my field of study. I need to get beyond the idea of of an oriental despot. We know from the social history that began in the 70's that Oriental Despotism is a flawed concept.


The problem however as I see it is a question of 'how we write history', who is included, who is not, what is ignored? I need sources, theory, which speakS to this. I need books on history and theory, and or historiography.

Does anyone have suggestions

Thanks in advance

[BobKKKindle$]

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
by Vijay Prashad

Prashad evaluates the history, not only of the nations which comprise the "third world" but also of the actual concept of the "third world" and the meaning of this term in popular discourse. Should be a good read - if you've read Wallerstein, you might also want to check out Gunder Frank and dependency theory, which provides a critique of Rostow's internalist approach to development.

[Luís Henrique]

I don't think it is reasonable to deny the "west's" dominant role in History, including history of the third world. Otherwise, how would we talk about imperialism?

Perry Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist State has a good appendix critical of Asian Mode of Production (tracing its origins back to the Montesquieu-Voltaire polemic), with abundant bibliography.

Luís Henrique

[MarxSchmarx]

The "third world" should certainly not be equated with the (mostly Arab-speaking) part of the globe you suggest. You might be interested to learn of the Jangal movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionalist_movement_of_Gilan)
which included "Persian soviets".

But as far as a broader third world theory is concerned, I doubt you can formulate one general approach. There is much in common among the first world, to be sure. But among peoples of the "third world", who are everything from Muslim to Catholic to athiest, I think each society needs to adopt its (rather extremely) localized, indigenous critique of capitalism. This has proved highly successful in, e..g, parts of Latin America and South Asia. Although there is always the "national liberation" question at the back of everyone's mind, I think by and large drawing on local traditions, in New Guinea or Norway, is the most direct approach to adopting socialism.