TAFATCI15U The politics of post-Development

Volume 2013/2014
Content

What is 'development'? Critical thinking about development as practice (and as cosmology)
After Afghanistan, can we still hold on to our conception of development? The replication of market democracies across the globe, including in Africa, is neither spontaneous nor easy and it seems obvious that ‘development’ has limits – including limits which the idea of ‘development’ itself sets on our ways of interacting with the world.

Given the pressing need for a rethink, the course takes an historical overview of development thinking (on both sides of the ideological divide) since the end of the second world war, including a look at the current consensus amongst development practitioners (multilateral, bilateral, NGO) centred around a ‘rights-based approach’. 

This provides the background for a consideration of the currently most influential critique of main-stream development thinking in the form of ‘post-development’.

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?

Learning Outcome

Academic goals
The aim is for the student to acquire the following qualifications:

  • Ability to select, in consultation with the instructor, a relevant sub-topic within the overall focus area of the thematic course. The sub-topic will often be empirical in nature and geared towards specific conditions inAfrica, but it can also be more theoretical.
  • Ability to independently and critically select relevant literature on the sub-topic to be studied.
  • Ability to independently and critically analyse the sub-topic in question and to place it within the overall context of the thematic course in question.
I normally begin my courses with a class discussion of which teaching methods are most useful. Although responses are different, there is a tendency that the 'classic' lecturing method, combined with plenum discussion, is most popular amongst students. We end the course with free-thinking workshops.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 28
  • Course Preparation
  • 272
  • Exam
  • 120
  • Total
  • 420
Credit
10 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Exam period
Autumn Semester - January 2014 Spring Semester - June 2014
Criteria for exam assesment

The grade of 12 is given at the exam when the student demonstrates:

  • Confident ability to identify and define a sub-topic and an issue of relevance to the overall theme of the thematic course.
  • Confident ability to independently and critically select relevant literature on the sub-topic to be studied.
  • Confident ability to independently and critically analyse the sub-topic in question and the chosen literature.
  • Confident ability to conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of the sub-topic in question and to place it within the overall theme of the thematic course in question.
  • Confident ability to communicate academic material in a clear, concise and well-argued manner.
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Oral examination, 45 min.
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Exam period
Autumn Semester - January 2014 Spring Semester - June 2014
Criteria for exam assesment

The grade of 12 is given at the exam when the student demonstrates:

  • Confident ability to identify and define a sub-topic and an issue of relevance to the overall theme of the thematic course.
  • Confident ability to independently and critically select relevant literature on the sub-topic to be studied.
  • Confident ability to independently and critically analyse the sub-topic in question and the chosen literature.
  • Confident ability to conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of the sub-topic in question and to place it within the overall theme of the thematic course in question.
  • Confident ability to communicate academic material in a clear, concise and well-argued manner.