ASTK12317U Course: The Politics of Post-development: Critical thinking about development practice and its predicaments
Masterlevel: 7,5 ECTS
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 in the Middle East and 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 postdevelopment,
the currently most influential critique of main-stream
development thinking. Postdevelopment draws on postcolonial and
poststructuralist
thought as represented by major thinkers from the global South such
as Fanon, Said, Spivak, Mbembe, Chatterjee and others.
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 content:
Introduction
Modernization theory
Dependency and underdevelopment theory
Market versus state and the structural adjustment programs
The Rise of Good Governance
Human Security and the Rights-based approach
The Security-development nexus
Postdevelopment – what is it, what are its claims, potentials and problems?
Way forward
- Overview of major approaches to development since the Second World War
- Specific focus on current ‘state of the art’ development (as doctrine and practice) 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 postdevelopment thinking.
Brigg, M. (2002). "Post-development, Foucault and the
colonisation metaphor." Third World Quarterly 23(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 Studies 16(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.
Fanon, F. (2004). The Wretched of the Earth, transl. from the
French by Richard Philcox, with commentary by Jean-Paul Sartre and
Homi K. Babha. New York, Grove Press.
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-building 4(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 Studies 36: 337-365.
Rasmussen, L. R. (2012). "The liberal dilemmas of a
people-centred approach to state-building." Conflict, Security
& Development 12(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.
- Category
- Hours
- Class Instruction
- 28
- Course Preparation
- 140
- Exam Preparation
- 34
- Preparation
- 4
- Total
- 206
- Credit
- 7,5 ECTS
- Type of assessment
- Oral examinationOral
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- External censorship
Criteria for exam assesment
- 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
Course information
- Language
- English
- Course code
- ASTK12317U
- Credit
- 7,5 ECTS
- Level
- Full Degree MasterBachelor
- Duration
- 1 semester
- Placement
- Spring
- Schedule
- C (Mon 13-17 + Wednes 8-17)
- Continuing and further education
- Study board
- Department of Political Science, Study Council
Contracting department
- Department of Political Science
Course responsibles
- Anders Berg-Sørensen (3-7071824f7875823d7a843d737a)
Lecturers
André Sonnichsen