Samhällsvetenskap: Historiska aspekter av utveckling

The course focuses on the foundation of development ideas as well as the roots of development problems and their multifaceted manifestations. It takes a comparative geographical and historical perspective from the past up until the present. It highlights a range of economic, political, social and cultural conditions and processes, including their origin and consequences, that the student analyses and presents at multiple scales and from various theoretical perspectives.

The course starts from a broad historical view of colonial processes in three continents accompanied by a wide-ranging theoretical discussion of colonial and imperialist history. After that follows an in-depth critical discussion of development ideas,policies and strategies in independent and decolonised countries.

Proceeding from the historical struggles for political control and the exploitation and control of natural resources in colonial Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the course traces, analyses and compares various development paths and strategies in the three continents and in specific countries. It identifies and analyses internal and external drivers of these processes and evaluates their outcomes. In this context and through the lenses of development theory and post-colonial theory including feminist critique of colonialism, images created by the West of the East (orientalism) and by the East of the West (occidentalism) are critically examined.

As part of the theoretical discussion and aided by a spectrum of perspectives ranging from a ‘basic needs approach’ to moretheoretical perspectives within feminism, post- development and sustainability science, the course examines development as a set of ideas, theories and practices aiming at social change while also scrutinising the critique against it for failing to bring about widely shared wealth.

Further information: master [at] sam [dot] lu [dot] se