• What is interdependence?
• Positive and negative interdependence
• Economic interdependence
• Social interdependence

We explain what interdependence is and why it can be positive or negative. Also, economic and social interdependence.

Interdependence implies a need between all the elements involved.

What is interdependence?

By the word interdependence we understand, in numerous and diverse contexts, any form of dependency reciprocal, that is, the relationship in which two or more individuals or entities require each other, they need each other.

This meaning is easy to deduce if we observe that the word is made up of the prefix "Inter" that denotes correspondence, reciprocity, or simply something that is in the middle; the verb "Depend" and the suffix "-Cia" that expresses condition.

Interdependence is discussed and reflected on from many points of view, considering biological, personal, social, economic, institutional, and a long etcetera.

In all cases, however, the sense of reciprocal necessity remains: in every interdependent relationship, if one of the terms fails or is omitted, the other will suffer the consequences; If one of them can remain unchanged in the absence of the other, it will not be possible to speak of interdependence.

The Indian philosopher Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948) was one of the great defenders of this concept as the ideal method to shape societies and for the relationships between nations, stating that recognizing how much Humans we need each other is the beginning for peace, the equity and the suppression of selfishness.

Positive and negative interdependence

According to the traditional approach, interdependence in any field can be classified into two types: positive and negative.

• Positive interdependence. It is one that fosters mutual benefit through the relationship of established need, to the extent that the two individuals benefit from their bond. For example, two nations whose foreign trade It is interdependent, that is, that they need to maintain their commercial link in the same and crucial measure, they will promote the exchange of goods and knowledge in a much more narrow and simple way than two nations whose commercial relations are distant or between which there is no Commerce.
• Negative interdependence. It is that, on the contrary, that weakens dependent individuals, which generally has the effect of enlarging mutual dependence to levels where neither of them can satisfy the needs that the bond initially posed. This type of negative interdependence relationship usually occurs, to insist on the same example, between nations whose trade relations are so mutually necessary that they are willing to forgive or turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by their partner, coming to justify wars and crimes against humanity in order to maintain the bond of mutual dependence.

Economic interdependence

Profits from what we produce allow us to buy what others produce.

Interdependence is a basic and key concept in the economy, which starts from an observable reality: nobody produces absolutely everything they need to live, and to that extent society exists so that some of us produce what others need and vice versa.

Contemporary economy works based on the need to produce in a specialized way and trade with other producers, so that what we are unable to produce we can buy with the money received from the sale of what we do produce.

The same is true between nations, for example. Exports and imports constitute a trade balance that allows offering what is produced and obtaining what is demanded, although this process does not always take place precisely in friendly terms and of mutual dependence, since other non-economic factors intervene in it.

Social interdependence

In a similar way to the previous case, social interdependence means that, as a society, human beings reciprocally require each other, since we are gregarious animals (we always tend towards the herd).

This aspect of our species has been studied extensively by the sociology, the psychology social and even educational sciences, since it has been shown that the human being reaches its greatest potential when it has significant relationships with others: relationships, precisely, interdependent, associative, in which it is given and received.