Entry requirements

This is a continuing course at undergraduate level that requires at least 30 Swedish higher education credits in Development Studies or corresponding knowledge. This course is taught only for exchange students.

Learning outcomes

The central aim of this course is to provide an understanding of how specific historical events have shaped debates on development in colonial and post-colonial contexts. A unique contribution of this course is to relate historical processes to contemporary development concerns around gendered global inequalities, how these processes co-exist in contemporary societies and how structural processes impact on everyday lives of people. The course draws on literature from different sources and is not confined to mainstream academic literature. For example, we will look at news media, documentaries, movies, policy reports, biographical narratives and historical texts together with the assigned mandatory readings.

By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to:

• Understand how contemporary development interventions are shaped by historical processes of imperialism, colonialism and orientalism.
• Demonstrate a critical understanding of dominant (post)colonial paradigms and how they shape global understandings.
• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of key theoretical ideas by delving deeper into feminist postcolonial debates on coloniality of power
• Demonstrate ability to use their conceptual knowledge to re-think empirical case studies in historical and contemporary development contexts.
• Grasp seminal (post)colonial and decolonial feminist debates. Decoloniality is an epistemic, political and cultural movement for emancipation that draws attention to the fact that the achievements of modernity are inseparable from racism, hetero-patriarchy, economic exploitation and discrimination of non-European knowledge systems.
• Demonstrate knowledge of structural and symbolic forms of violence
• Understand the gendered violence(s) of development.
• Demonstrate advanced knowledge on how development processes both alleviate suffering and impoverish livelihoods.

Content

The course is structured in the following way. We will analyse development issues, historically, conceptually and theoretically and then understand their (post)colonial continuities through an empirical case study. We will analyse historical continuities and convergences with contemporary events, ranging from global 'war on terror', the rise of new forms of nationalism, cycles of poverty and deprivation and armed conflict. Focusing primarily on the global South, the unit will draw empirical examples from Africa, the Middle East, South and South East Asia and Latin America. The course covers the themes of: Orientalism, Eroticism and Control of the 'Native'; Orientalism, Feminism and the 'War on Terror; Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP); Structurally Adjusted Economies, Border Industries and Femicide; Population, Eugenics and Neoliberalism; Transnational Surrogacy, Global South and the Politics of Reproduction; Gender, Conflict and Migrant Border Crossings and Migrants, Hospitality and Hostility.

Instruction

The teaching consists of lectures and mandatory seminars. The course is taught in English.

Assessment

Students will be examined through a written exam. Grades are awarded according to the scale "failed", "pass" or "pass with distinction". If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.

Other directives

Further instructions will be given at the start of the course.