Trans-Local and Trans-Regional Socio-Economic Structures in Global Development: A ‘Horizontal’ Perspective

This chapter explores the trans-national and cross-regional interactions and connections that, beginning in the late eighteenth century, brought about the development of dualistic economies within and outside of Europe; and how this circuit was reconfigured after the world wars by means of decolonization, nationalism, “first” and “second” world development, and globalization. What this perspective brings into view is a horizontal rather than vertical division of the world: the synchronic and interdependent development of dynamic focal points of growth throughout the world shaped, both within and outside of Europe, by trans-local interaction and connection, as well as by local struggles and relations of dominance and subordination.