This book deals with one of sociology's major concerns - the explanation of macrostructural change. Whithin the framework of a broad comparative analysis of dominant and marginal paradigms of sociocultural change, it specifically examines the extent to which these are able to provide a valid explanation of underdevelopment. To this end, the approaches to underdevelopment elaborated in Romania between 1860 and 1945 and foreshadowing key elements of present-day neovolutionism, word-systems analysis, and postcolonial theories are used as a case study. Very much like in the case of "classical" colonial societies, Romania's status as an underdeveloped, and as such "pathological region" at the beginning of the 19th century had triggered a fruitful debate series over modernity's contradictions as well as its universal recipe for modernization. The creativity of "peripheral thinking" thus questions the (Euro)Center's current monopoly on theoretical production.