Gunder Frank, Andre (1929–2005)

Andre Gunder Frank is known throughout the world for his work on injustice, especially in dependency economics, political change, and history. His early focus on the factors leading to economic underdevelopment and inequality in Latin America has helped social activists focus on central issues of injustice. The recent extension of his work to the global economy and its roots in Asia more than 5,000 years ago extended our world system vision. He usually is recognized as the leading force in showing why capital accumulation by rich nations and the “profit-motive” are detrimental, especially to economically developing, poor countries, and how we can act to change such inequality.

Much of his lifelong work revolved around promoting diversity and justice. Frank explicated the dangers in the sweeping and increasing commodification and homogenization of all forms of life. While many elites have tried to portray him as a deviant, his personal and professional actions clearly reveal the positive nature of his deviance. He was sensitive to the difference between radical and radical chic behavior. He departed from the norm to help the poor, the oppressed, and the dispossessed, and has been a major influence on liberation theology. Frank stood in the line of fire for telling the truth, from his debunking of the claim that dependent development was good for poor countries to his challenges to orthodox macroeconomics. He helped lead the struggle for justice and articulated the significant difference between being economically poor and culturally rich. He presented seminal evidence on the ostensible periphery (economically poor countries or technologically developing ones) and the relevance of their “richness” in many other ways.

Frank's writing and participation in social movements also exhibited his lifelong concern with equality before efficiency. Along with his spouse, Marta Fuente, Frank helped other activists avoid the misguided historical and nonempirical interpretations of the causes and consequences of worldwide social movements. Fuentes and Frank presented an analysis of social movements that have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared for centuries and, in some cases, for millennia throughout the world. Their analyses examine countless social movements, such as the Spartacist slave revolts in Rome, religious wars, peasant movements, historical ethnic and nationalist conflict throughout the continent, and women's movements, that unleashed backlashes of witch hunts and more recent forms of repression. Frank noted the multiple forms of social movements that have been the agents of social resistance and transformation throughout history in Asia, the Arab world, Africa, and Latin America.

Frank explained why the majority of large-scale movements in core countries are middle class, while those in the poor countries have been primarily popular or working class. So-called Third World movements typically emerged from world economic crises, and the participants were (and are) struggling for sheer physical and economic survival and cultural identity. Focusing on the women's movement, Fuentes and Frank note how virtually all religious, ethnic, and nationalist movements, and working-class and ostensibly radically oriented movements and political [Page 658]parties as well, tend to negate and sacrifice women's interests. They showed how social movements' policies or practices that employ hierarchical and dualistic means to their ends are enemies of most women's movements, particularly in the Third World.

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