ASTK12266U The Politics of Post-Development

Volume 2014/2015
Content

After Afghanistan, can we still hold on to our conception of development? The replication of market democracies via state-building and democratization in post-colonial countries, including in Africa, is neither spontaneous nor easy and it seems obvious that ‘development’ has serious limits – including limits which the idea of ‘development’ itself sets on our ways of interacting with the world.

The course begins with an historical overview of development thinking since the end of the second world war, leading to a thorough look at the current ‘state of the art’ consensus amongst development practitioners, who link development policy and security policy around a ‘rights-based approach’ aimed at ‘human security’. 

This provides the platform for an engagement with ‘post-development’, the currently most influential critique of main-stream development thinking.

The course dismisses polemic suggestions of “Western Imperialism”. Instead, we will try to undertake a sincere interrogation of our notion of development in terms of the solutions that it makes thinkable, the practices it enables and endorses and the consequences it produces for recipients of ‘development’.

The course will attempt to articulate ‘development’ as exemplary of a deeper predicament - political, ethical, democratic – that arises from the interlocking of differing modes of social being. What hopes and miseries emerge from this meeting, and what is the way forward?
 

Course Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Modernization thinking
  • Dependency and underdevelopment thinking
  • Market versus state and the structural adjustment programs
  • The Rise of Good Governance
  • Human Security and the Rights-based approach
  • The Security-development nexus
  • Post-development – what is it, what are its claims, potentials and problems?
  • Way forward 
Learning Outcome
  • Overview of major approaches to development since the Second World War
  • Specific focus on current ‘state of the art’ development thinking since the end of the Cold War: peacebuilding, state-building, democratization and the interlinking of development policy and security policy.
  • Specific focus on the most significant critique of Western development practice and development thinking, namely “post-development” thinking.

Brigg, M. (2002). "Post-development, Foucault and the colonisation metaphor." Third World Quarterly23(3): 421-436.

Chandler, D. (2010). International statebuilding, the rise of post-liberal governance. London: Routledge.

Dillon, M. and J. Reid (2009). The liberal way of war - killing to make life live. London, Routledge.

Dirlik, A. (2014). "Developmentalism." Interventions - International Journal of Postcolonial Studies16(1): 30-48.

Duffield, M. (2007). Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples. London, Polity Press.

Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development, the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton.

Ferguson, J. (2007 (1994)). The anti-politics machine, "development", depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis.

Fukuyama, F. (2004). State Building - Governance and World Order in the Twenty-First Century. London, Profile Books.

Giri, A. K., Ed. (2003). A Moral Critique of Development: In Search of Global Responsibilities. London, Routledge.

Harrison, G. (2010). "Practices of Intervention: Repertoires, Habits and Conduct in Neoliberal Africa." Journal of Intervention and State-building4(4): 433-452.

Leftwich, A. (2000). States of Development: On the Primacy of Politics in Development. London, Polity.

Moyo, D. (2009). Dead aid, why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. New York, NY, New York, NY : Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2010). Development theory (Second Edition). London, London : SAGE.

Paris, R. (2010). "Saving liberal peacebuilding." Review of International Studies36: 337-365.

Rasmussen, L. R. (2012). "The liberal dilemmas of a people-centred approach to state-building." Conflict, Security & Development12(2): 103-121.

Reid, J. (2009). The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: Life Struggles, Liberal Modernity and the Defence of Logistical Societies. Reappraising the Political. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Rodney, W. (1982). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a State - How Certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed, Yale University Press.

Sørensen, G. (2011). A Liberal Order in Crisis. Choosing between imposition and restraint. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press.

Ziai, A., Ed. (2007). Exploring post-development: theory and practice, problems and perspectives. New York, Routledge.

To be announced
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 28
  • Exam
  • 79
  • Preparation
  • 168
  • Total
  • 275
Credit
10 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written examination
Written exam
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Criteria for exam assesment

Criteria for achieving the goals:

  • Grade 12 is given for an outstanding performance: the student lives up to the course's goal description in an independent and convincing manner with no or few and minor shortcomings
  • Grade 7 is given for a good performance: the student is confidently able to live up to the goal description, albeit with several shortcomings
  • Grade 02 is given for an adequate performance: the minimum acceptable performance in which the student is only able to live up to the goal description in an insecure and incomplete manner