Tore Linné Eriksen og de store utviklingsspørsmålene

This article reviews some of Tore Linné Eriksen’s works within developmentstudies/development research. In a recent introduction to development studies from 2013,he presented development research as a cross-disciplinary social science approach thataddresses the grand problems of mankind. Eriksen’s own research into these grandproblems has concentrated on the causes of national and international inequality andpoverty. In 1974 he supported the view of the “underdevelopment school”:“Underdevelopment” in Africa and Latin America was the outcome of the inclusion of thosecontinents in a capitalist world economy dominated by Europe. Recent works by Eriksen onthe origins of the “great divergence” between Western Europe and economically advancednon-European countries (2010) and on inequality and poverty in the current world (2012)are far more complex and empirically nuanced. Still, in a recent discussion of globalizationand global capitalism (2013) he reverts to some of the earlier ”underdevelopmentarguments” from 1974. The article concludes that there is a tension within Eriksen’s workson the role of capitalism in development and underdevelopment. In his programmaticwritings, global capitalism is seen as the main cause of inequality and poverty. In his moreempirically grounded works, global capitalism is viewed rather as an important part of thebigger picture of inequality and povert