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The seminar discusses central theories and controversies of social science development research, as well as different aspects of development practice, with a particular emphasis on strategies of development cooperation. We will start by introducing key theoretical concepts of development and different streams of critique as well as discuss why empirical assessment of development (however understood) is inevitable but also problematic, and how use of concepts such as ‘developing country’ is based on empirical assessment, but necessarily politically constructed.
In a second step, we will discuss selected conceptual and theoretical arguments for developmental success/failure, going back to the metatheories of the 1960s and 1970s and discuss their legacies for today’s development discourse as well as corresponding strategies that were developed on the basis of such arguments, but also cover the relevance of a variety of concepts such as democracy, popular participation, or gender mainstreaming within the developmental field. In discussing concepts and empirics we will integrate a variety of theoretical perspectives, but trust to also make best use of the diversity of developmental experiences from among course participants.
In a third part of the seminar we will reflect about the concerted efforts of the international community to actively strengthen development (‘development cooperation’), but also see how such efforts have become less relevant within a changing international financial system, with the nature of financial flows between the Global North and South dramatically affected. With regard to the development cooperation regime we will discuss how the broader objectives behind development cooperation have changed over the years, but also how the question of who sets the goals has more recently moved on the agenda. Students will understand the diversity of what is labelled as development cooperation in terms of actors involved, strategies and instruments applied, and intended and unintended effects and implications. We will finally turn to the critical challenge that new powers from the Global South pose to global governance, with regard to development cooperation and beyond.
In the seminar students will thus deepen their knowledge about different development concepts and strategies with often conflicting assumptions and strategic recommendations. Students will learn to critically reflect on the development discourse, its different theoretical approaches and related practices of development cooperation with a view towards engagement in their own research projects. |
