Latin American contributions to Economic Thought: Dependence, Extractivism and Good Living

In the following lines we are going to review some contributions to economic thought that are distinctively Latin American, not only because they were born in Latin America but also because they are oriented towards explaining specific Latin American problems. Among them, we are going to highlight Dependency Theory, Extractivism and Buen Vivir, summarising their concerns and the content of their contributions. The three cases show a broad genealogy of diverse contributions that converge around a number of common issues and topics. Moreover, all three approaches can be understood as theoretical developments which have a strong realist character, because they are based on the observation of a range of problems identified through a historical-structural approach. Thus, Dependency Theory, Extractivism and Buen Vivir are built in a way that represent an amendment to the dominant forms of understanding and managing the economy. In this sense, they are one of the most outstanding expressions of economic heterodoxy in the last century. In this context, they not only propose other ways of explaining events, but also other modes of interacting with reality, in other words, other policies