In one form or another, the concept of dependence has, from the first, been foundational to modern understandings of humanity, society, and economy. For liberal theorists, individual freedom stemmed from a natural right to property that “owed nothing to society;” those without proprietorship of person and possessions were reduced to a dehumanized “dependance on the will of other men” (Macpherson 1962: 3,158). In this formulation, the dependence connotes incompleteness, indigence, disenfranchisement.
