POL377H1F L0201

Topics in Comparative Politics I

Development: History, Debates and Problem-Spaces

Themes

Development is one of the most controversial topics of our times. Its meaning is broad, and its trajectories are diverse. More than a qualification of certain geographies, however, development has a double meaning: the development of capitalism and the penetration of market logic on a global scale, and development as a set of interventions in third-world countries to pull these geographies into global circuits of extraction. The course introduces students to development in this double sense, the historical conditions of its emergence, including its relationship to colonialism, empire, and decolonization, and the measurements through which it circulates. Students will also explore the thriving poverty business the development project gives rise to and some of the main debates characterizing it.

Texts

Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty; William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Jamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason; Andrew Martin Fischer, Poverty as Ideology; among others.

Format and Requirements

A combination of class participation, reading responses, and in-class essays.