Unit Leader : Ray Kiely
Credit Weighting : 20
Level: 2
Teaching Format : 4 hours a week: lectures, Seminars, videos and tutorials
Pre-requisite : TWS 103 and TWS 104 or Level 1 Social Science
Excluded Combinations : None
Co-requisite : None
Aims
To provide students with a solid understanding of competing perspectives
on development and underdevelopment in the Third World and the contexts
in which they emerged.
After completing the unit students should:
(i) have a basic understanding of the main definitions of development
and of the criteria used to evaluate development processes.
(ii) understand the main perspectives and debates in development
thinking particularly since the 1950s and be able to evaluate their
strengths and weaknesses as explanatory frameworks of development
and underdevelopment in the Third World.
(iii) have a knowledge of how perspectives on development have been
linked to development strategies and ideologies (this will be covered
in detail in TWS 204 and TWS 205)
(iv) have a sense of how the competing perspectives on development are
connected to particular periods and concerns.
Content
(i) Definitions of development; the economic context of development;
political institutions involved in development; the role of values and
interests; distinction between development theories, strategies and
ideologies; socialist and capitalist development models.
(ii) The background to development thinking: transition to capitalism in
Europe; the idea of progress; classical economics approach; Marx and
Lenin on imperialism; 19th C. populism; Max Weber and Durkheim, the
Soviet Industrialisation debate; Maoism.
(iii) The rise of development thinking and the optimism of the 1950s/60s:
development as economic growth; development economics;
Modernisation Theory.
(iv) A new perspective - the voice of the Third World: a) the `failure' of
development and the shortcomings of Modernisation theory and Soviet
Marxism; structuralism and dependency theory. b) Critics of
dependency; the mode of production debate; Bill Warren; neo-classical
critics. c) Influence of structuralist thinking; Jamaica under Manley;
Tanzania under Nyerere; China's development strategy in the 1960s
and Maoism.
(v) Globalisation and the rise of `global theories'; the Brandt Commission
and the New International Economic Order; World Systems Theory; the
New Right and Neo-Liberalism.
(vi) Alternative approaches to development: Basic Needs and the
International Labour Organisation; environmentalism and sustainable
development; ethno-development; feminist critiques of development
thinking; culture - the missing concept in development.
Assessment
Two essays (50%), Exam (50%)
Indicative Readings
*Larrain, J. (1989) Theories of Development (Polity)
Kay, C. (1989) Latin American Theories of Development and
Underdevelopment
Toye, J. (1987) Dilemmas of Development
Leys, C. (1994) The Rise and Fall of Development Theory
(James Currey)
Booth D. (ed) (1994) Rethinking Social Development (Longman)
*Kiely, R (1995) Sociology and Development (UCL Press)
* - book for purchase