Samir Amin

Samir Amin (1931-2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist and political scientist known for his contributions to dependency theory and world-systems analysis. He described global capitalism as a structure of a dominant center of developed nations and an exploited periphery of underdeveloped ones, and introduced the concept of Eurocentrism in a 1988 book of that name. His prescription for peripheral economies, which he called delinking, called for subordinating international economic relations to domestic development priorities rather than pursuing full integration into the world market. He directed the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning from 1970 to 1980 and later led the Third World Forum in Dakar.