Postgraduate Course: Interpreting Development: Institutions and Practices (PGSP11296)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Development policies and strategies are important in all societies, and their outcomes, intended and unintended, have profound effects on the peoples and states where they are implemented. In this course we will explore these effects through a series of case studies focusing on the institutions that are responsible for delivering planned social change. In particular an ethnographic and culturally sensitive approach to understanding these development processes and practices will be developed, and the course will highlight anthropology's particular contribution to understanding and engaging in social development institutions. Through looking at these institutions involved in development, we will explore the relationship between development, the economy, science, health and the environment and climate change. |
| Course description |
Weekly outline:
Week 1: Interpreting Development: introducing the course
Week 2: CARE, the UNHCR, and humanitarian perspectives on development
Week 3: Development at the borders, and the borders of development
Week 4: DfID, USAID and bilateral attempts to aid development
Week 5: 'Local' NGOs and the place of civil society in development
NO LECTURE - Innovative Learning Week
Week 6: World Vision, The Central Methodist Mission and the role of religion in development
Week 7: Development decades, goals and organisations: the UN 'system' and development
Week 8: IMF, the World Bank and the changing nature of global governance
Week 9: The WHO, the Fund, and the politics of global health
Week 10: Interpreting the Course
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 60 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by a 4,000 word essay to be submitted at the end of the course. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- By the end of the course students will have an advanced knowledge and understanding of key concepts and theoretical approaches to understanding institutions and development. In particular, they will
- have a critical understanding of the key institutions involved in the development process, and how they deliver programmes, particularly in relation to the economy, environment, climate change and health.
- have an advanced understanding of the contributions of ethnographic and culturally-sensitive approaches to the analysis of development institutions, ideas and practices
- have an understanding of the key epistemological issues in the generation of development knowledge - Aims and Objectives:
The course's aim is to provide students with a critical understanding of development by analysing the institutions involved in the provision of this specific form of planned social change. This will involve analysing these institutions in relation to their historical development; exploring their stated mission, aims and objectives and the effects of their practices, both intended and unintended; and looking at case studies of institutional relations and practices across a range of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In particular we will be applying anthropological and social science perspectives to the study and analysis of these institutions and processes. An overall objective of the course is thus to develop a critical understanding of how aid and development work in practice, one that avoids the twin trap falls of, on the one hand, a hyped-up vision of development as entirely positive progress, or on the other a pervasive cynicism towards its effects.
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Reading List
Indicative Readings:
Escobar A (1994) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press.
Gellner D & E Hirsch (eds) 2001. Inside Organisations: Anthropologists at Work. Berg.
Ferguson J (1994) The Anti-politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press
Harrison M, M Jones H Sweet (eds) 2009. From Western Medicine to Global Medicine: The Hospital Beyond the West. Orient Black Swan.
Inda X (ed) (2005). Anthropologies of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics. Blackwell.
Justice, J (1982) Policies, Plans and People: Foreign Aid and Health Development. University of California Press.
Li T (2007) The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press.
Lisk, F 2010. Global Institutions and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Responding to an international crisis. Abingdon: Routledge.
Mosse, D (2005) Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. Pluto Press.
Mosse D (ed) (2011) Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development (Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology v. 6) Berghahn.
Ong A & S Collier (eds) (2005) Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Blackwell.
Petreyna, A 2009. When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Thin N (2002). Social Progress and Sustainable Development. ITDG Publishing
Smith J (2009) Technology for Development (Development Matters). Zed Books.
Human Development Report (2009) Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development. UNDP; World Development Report (2010) Development and Climate Change. World Bank; The World Health Report (2011) Health Systems Financing ¿ the path to universal coverage. World Health Organisation (examples indicative of a range of reports from the institutions themselves) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Sarah Jane Cooper Knock
Tel:
Email: s.j.cooperknock@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Jessica Barton
Tel: (0131 6)51 1659
Email: Jessica.Barton@ed.ac.uk |
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