What are we talking about when we talk about deindustrialization? A brief tour to the theoretical debate and a discussion from the Argentine case

Abstract

This essay discusses the main theoretical alternatives of the debate about deindustrializa­tion and analyzes some specific characteristics of the Argentine industrial decline. The pa­per argues that the use of the concept of deindustrialization in the economic literature has been crossed by a series of definitional ambiguities and that the debate on the subject has be­come imprecise. At the same time, much of that debate was circumscribed to developed economies. Given that the industrial decline of Argentina constitutes a process of extraor­dinary importance and presents several specificities, it is relevant to clarify what we are talking about when we talk about deindustrialization from a perspective consistent with the domestic experience.