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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2014/2015
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Social and Political Science : African Studies

Undergraduate Course: International Development, Aid and Humanitarianism (AFRI08001)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Social and Political Science CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 8 (Year 2 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis 2nd year course aims to allow undergraduate students to develop an understanding of social science engagements with international development, aid and humanitarianism whilst focusing their attention on the global challenges of poverty, inequality, human rights, the environment, gender, urbanization, public health, and migration.

The course will explore the histories, impacts and legacies of international development planning and policy, introducing students to foundational issues in development studies and offering them the opportunity to conduct a modest research project on a specific theme. The course will explore the relationships between economic growth and inequality, structures of aid and trade, relationships of power and dependency, conflict, urbanisation and migration as well as approaches to sustainable development.

At the end of the course, students will be able to discuss and analyse key debates in the theory and practice of international development and will have a firm grounding in the historical and political contexts that continue to frame development at both the local and global level.

A class prize, the Global Development Academy Undergraduate Essay Prize, will be awarded for the best overall performance.
Course description Week One
Introducing development and humanitarianism:
Key concepts and questions for the road ahead

Lecture One:
What is ¿humanitarianism¿? We explore the principles of Dunantist humanitarianism and trace the historical roots of humanitarianism into colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity. Bringing our focus to the present day, we look at some of the key debates and challenges that face humanitarians.
Key Questions: What is the difference between humanitarianism and emergency assistance? What is the difference between humanitarian assistance and humanitarian intervention? Are principles such as neutrality and impartiality still relevant today?
Lecture Two:

What does ¿development¿ mean? We explore the growing interest in international development in the mid-twentieth century, provide a brief historical overview of development thought, and highlight some of the ongoing questions that consume development theorists.

Key Questions: Where is the border between development and humanitarianism? How central is economics to our definition of ¿development¿? Who or what should development policy target? Who should design, deliver and drive development? How can we measure development progress?
Week Two
Who leads development? Invisible hands and bureaucratic footprints

Lecture One

At the heart of many debates over development has been a disagreement over the role of ¿the state¿ and ¿the market¿. In this lecture, we focus in on developmental states Tanzania and South Korea after WWII, looking at their relative success or failure.

Key Questions: How and why did each of these developmental approaches emerge? What explains their relative success and failure? What lessons can we learn that can be translated to different developmental contexts? What do these examples tell us about the relationship between development and democracy?
Lecture Two
In the 1970s social and economic theorists championed the role of the market in delivering international development, arguing that governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa were ineffective, inefficient and corrupt. International financial institutions made public sector restructuring, privatisation and the removal of barriers to foreign investment a condition of loans. In the 1990s the impact of these structural adjustment policies in Latin America saw the emergence of social movements and civil society organisations that transformed the arena of development.
Key Questions: To what extent can the development trajectories of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America from the late 1970s be attributed to Structural Adjustment Packages? How did civil society react to these emerging policies and ideas? Do the basic prescriptions of the Washington Consensus continue to form the core of development policy today?
Week Three
Media, technology and representation in development
Lecture One
In this lecture we explore at how development and humanitarian projects are constructions in the media, and their impact on imaginaries, policies and practices across the world. We also look at the presence of celebrities in these fields, from Bono to Angelina Jolie.
Key Questions: How forms of media representation do we encounter when it comes to development and humanitarianism? How does this shape our understandings of the people, places and power in development and humanitarianism? How significant has the presence of ¿new media¿ been in shaping the construction of development and humanitarianism? Are celebrities playing an increasingly important role in these fields? What effect do they have?
Lecture Two
Technology has been central to the delivery of humanitarian assistance and development and, in this lecture, we explore how particular kinds of technologies (from the bicycle, sewing machine, mobile phone and solar lantern) have come to be invested with promises of social transformation, exploring how they have shaped the way in which development is located and practised, and how they have come to present particular opportunities and challenges for their users.
Week Four
Aid Trade and Charity
Lecture One:

We look at the architecture of aid for humanitarianism and development, analyse the aims and aspirations of donors, and explore the critiques that have been levied against aid, and the responses that have been made.

Key Questions: Does aid do more harm than good in complex emergencies? Can a ¿big push¿ for aid make a difference in development? Can aid be used to change the behaviour of actors and institutions?

Lecture Two:

This lecture explores the increasingly important role of business in aid, humanitarianism and international development, exploring how governments in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia work to attract foreign direct investment, introducing debates about fair trade and asking how large multinational corporations and social enterprises became ¿moral actors¿.

Key Questions:
How have corporations and businesses become agents of development? What is the race to the bottom? Can we shop for justice? What are the prospects for Fair Trade and Bottom of the Pyramid in development?


Week Five
Conflict, Security, and Development
Lecture One:
How conflict is defined and labelled shape how we respond to them. In this context, we explore humanitarian intervention. Drawing on a variety of case studies, we analyse the legality and legitimacy of armed humanitarianism.
Key Questions: How do we define and label violence? What are the political implications of these definitions? What is the Responsibility to Protect and what effect has it had? Have humanitarian interventions in the past been legal and legitimate? Is the idea of humanitarian violence a contradiction in terms?
Lecture Two:
Security has played an increasingly central role in development theory and practice in recent years. In this context, we look at the role of state-building, in policy and on the ground.
Key Questions: Why and how did state-building emerge as a developmental pursuit? Is ¿state-building¿ a feasible and desirable target for development assistance?
Week Seven
From Public Health Emergencies to Healthy Publics
Lecture One:
This week of the course will look at health and development, considering why health has become so central in recent years to understandings of development. The course will consider the particular salience of global health challenges, how anxieties over security have pushed health up the development agenda, and how public health campaigns - from clean hands to anti-malaria drives - produce global publics.
Key Questions: How have ¿epidemics¿ from HIV/AIDS to Ebola been framed and understood at a global level? How do these framings reflect and reinforce broader ideas of publics within developing countries? How should we understand the political economy of health?
Lecture Two:
In this lecture we shift from the global to the local, looking at how health is understood and treated at a local level.
Key Questions: How do health issues fit and challenge pre-existing world views in developing countries? How do these issues reflect, undermine, or reinforce local power dynamics?

Week Eight
From natural disasters to sustainable development
Lecture One:
This week we begin by analysing natural disasters, exploring the politics behind the emergence of these emergencies and responses to them. In doing so, we draw on cases studies from Pakistan (2005), the US (2005), Haiti (2010), and East Africa (2011).
Key Questions: What is ¿natural¿ about natural disasters? Are responses to natural disasters improving? In what ways, and to what degree, should humanitarian assistance differ in response to conflict and natural disaster? What impact have policy shifts towards ¿resilience¿ had?
Lecture Two:

In this second lecture we explore what sustainability means in the context of international development, from efforts to sustain the culture, livelihoods and practices of indigenous people, and efforts to ensure the sustainability of forest, marine and mountain ecosystems to efforts aimed at sustaining current indicators of social and economic wellbeing without unsustainable rates of growth.

Key Questions: What kinds of power relationships shape debates about sustainability in international development? What do climate change mitigation policies look like in the Global South? Is green growth possible? And what do we mean by de-growth?
Week Nine
Moving up and moving out: mobility in crisis and development
Lecture One:
In this lecture, we focus on efforts to tackle forced migration in the face of conflict and natural disasters, analysing the creation and impact of labels like ¿migrant¿, ¿refugee¿ and ¿internally displaced person¿, and exploring the politics of provision in protracted crises.
Key Questions: Does the creation of new labels for forced migration help or hinder humanitarian practice? To what degree can different strands of migration be separated? Should we simply focus on civilians in crisis? Why do we have refugee camps? Whose interests do they serve?
Lecture Two:
In the past, development policy and practice has tended to see mobility in negative terms, but in recent years this perception has started to change. We analyse this shift, and look at the variety of ways in which migration and development intersect.
Key Question: How and why did the apparent consensus on the migration-development nexus emerge? Are diasporas, development agencies, and governments talking about the same thing when they talk about ¿development¿? What are the advantages and challenges of remittances? What possibilities and problems that surround returnees?
Week Ten
Languages of Empowerment: Gender and Youth
Lecture One:
This week, we will turn to look at particular groups who are targeted by development actors, considering the extent to which gender and generation play a role in shaping development, as well as ideas and discourses of empowerment. We begin by looking at the ways in which women have been incorporated ¿ or excluded ¿ from development processes, as well as considering feminist critiques of development. Working from the 1970s to the present day, we look at shifts from women in development to gender and development, and consider the role of masculinities in development.
Key Questions: When and why did a focus on women in development first emerge? Why has there since been a shift gender and development? To what degree and in what ways should development interventions focus on men and masculinities?
Lecture Two:
Young people have been variably seen as a hope for development and a threat to it. This week we look at how we might understand childhood and youth in cross-cultural contexts, and explore how development policies and practices address the particular needs and interests of children and young people. In particular, we look at issues of education and employment.
Key Questions: Is ¿childhood¿ and ¿youth¿ universal? Is all child labour bad? What role does primary, secondary, and tertiary education play in ideas of development? And how does education change the expectations of young people?

Week Eleven
Seeds of Change? Urban and Rural Futures

Lecture One:
This week, we look at different spaces of development and draw on key themes from the course as we explore future developmental trajectories. With worries over food security mounting in recent years, rural areas have come into focus again in development circles. Focusing in on sub-Saharan Africa, we look at the case studies of Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe and ask what they tell us about rural land use, land ownership, and the question of land redistribution.
Key Questions: Do individual agriculturalists need to own land for rural development to thrive? How important is land redistribution from a developmental and moral standpoint? Is redistribution through coercion defensible? What impact have ¿land grabs¿ had on agricultural development in recent years?
Lecture Two:
Urbanisation and the growth of cities has long polarised development thinkers. We focus in on the question of urban poverty and informality, paying particular attention to informal settlements. We explore how informal settlements have been understood and experienced, as well as the politics and policies that surround them.
Key Questions: Why do informal settlements emerge? What challenges and opportunities do they present? How has the idea of a ¿right to the city¿ shaped the policies and politics that surround informal settlements? How has the idea of the idea of the ¿world class city¿ emerged? What repercussions does it have for development?
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed:
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements THIS IS A 2ND YEAR UG COURSE.
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  151
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 163 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 45 %, Coursework 55 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) The Degree Examination mark for the course will be based on a combination of
1)45% Research Report: Students will be expected to produce a 1500-2000 word policy brief by the end of Week 7 on a key development issue. This constitutes a formative feedback event.
2)45% Exam: A one-paper exam sat at the end of the Semester.
3)10%: Tutorial Participation: Awarded based upon presence in tutorials and evidence of key readings
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
Students will gain:
-A critically informed overview of contemporary international development and humanitarianism, policy making and political economy, locating policy agendas historically and within a global context.
-An ability to apply the skills and knowledge acquired in social science disciplines to global challenges.
-A critical understanding of and engagement with key issues, themes and arenas of policy making and intervention in the arena of international development and humanitarianism.
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Jamie Cross
Tel:
Email: Jamie.Cross@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: Ewen.Miller@ed.ac.uk
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