Melungeon Characters in Literature, Complexity and Dependency Theory

I am writing an article about Kate Chopin and Chris Offutt. Offutt has Melungeon characters in two of his stories. I'm thinking about Wallerstein, the South as "dependent," complexity science and dependency theory. There were heated debates in past decades between marxists and dependency theorists of various types. Given the current widespread interest in anarchist theory, the growing interest in complexity science, and the writings of Wallerstein on complexity science, I am interested in getting a discussion going. What do readers of this blog think about dependency theory in 2011? Does it offer (in any of its versions) useful categories for understanding border regions? The South? Southern writers?