JOHAN GALTUNG "developed/developing" is a part of the Western syndrome whereby west defines itself as completed and the rest of the world as a periphery waiting to become like West. The word-pair "underdeveloped-overdeveloped" does away with this asymmetry defining either as maldeveloped, one because there are too few means available for the satisfaction of human needs, the other because there are too many.20 (Needless to say, there are underdeveloped pockets in the overdeveloped countries and overdeveloped pockets in the underdeveloped countries). • • • Collective self-reliance in today's Center is more than a mechanism of defense against collective self-reliance in today's Periphery: "if you deny us raw materials we shall use synthetics; if you quadruple the prices of your oil we shall develop nuclear energy and other alternatives (in addition to making use of Norwegian oil resources)", and so on. This is a highly foreseeable consequence and by and large to the good because it will, not unlike an economic boycott, force the Periphery into even more self-reliance, thereby gradually making the terms "Center" and "Periphery" obsolete. The same, incidentally, applies to the present pattern of Center countries to withdraw or withold money and personnel to intergovernmental organizations, including falling back on their own organizations (EC, OECD, ad hoc meetings etc.): it will pave the way for a Third World Secretariat, even a Third World UN ln addition to (not to the exclusion of) the present system. But self-reliance in the Center, particularly when practised at the local level, also gives the overdeveloped, capitalist West a chance to regain so much of what has been lost in recent times: a sense of mastery of local destiny, mobilization of local creativity, less dependence on professionals, less clientelization • generally speaking, new technologies (intermediate, soft, appropriate, human) with smaller economic cycles that are more aligned with middle-range ecological cycles, mass participation, societies less vulnerable to military attack: in short the list we have just gone through. Sorne lowering of purely material standard of living is a very low price to pay for that - and as the contradictions sharpen the probability that Center populations (not only some intel- ,. See Johan Galtung et al., Measurlng World Development, Chair ln Confilet and Peace Research, University of Oslo, Oslo 1974. 66
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