TI 705

Managing Development

Dr Patrick Collins and Dr Kathy Reilly

Blackboard is enabled for this module; for details of how to access Blackboard, please click here.

Please click below for various module details:

• Module rationale
• Key learning outcomes
• Assessment
• Readings
• Full module outline

Module rationale

This module explores contemporary approaches to ’managing development’. The module has two principal aims. One, it investigates the ways in which development, as currently implemented, has or does not have the potential of improving livelihoods. Two, the module asks if development holds or does not hold possibilities for being re-appropriated, redefined, reconstituted, and re-implemented by people at local scales, who are most affected by the ways that development processes intend to arrange their daily lives. Building on the foundational material covered in Semester 1, this implies an understanding of how development, as a set of processes and strategies that seek to shape economic, social, political, and environmental policies and practices, is conceptualised and by whom. Development is necessarily multi-dimensional, as these processes inevitably involve a range of actors and institutions operating at the international, national, regional, and local scales. These development geographies constitute and are constituted by issues of shifting significance, depending on their articulation in place and how these processes are embraced (or not) by the various actors. Dominant, contemporary models for ’managing development’ are nascent in the Global North, as development is a concept invented by these countries as an initial stage of post-colonialism and as processes to aide countries in becoming more ’modern’. Thus, when these political economic processes are applied to the Global South, the potential of these processes resulting in sustainable and ’even’ development is highly suspect. This class highlights important inquiries around the roles of democracy and civil society.

The class will focus on various questions: What does it mean to ’manage development’? Is this possible? Whose interests are ultimately represented in development?  How is development ’operationalized’ in specific places? And how and under what conditions is development influenced and contested? If development is re-appropriated and redefined by local populations and citizens, who are most affected by development, is more economically, socially, and ecologically just development possible? Why or why not? 

Key learning outcomes

The aims of the module are to

• encourage students to gain a critical understanding of current development management issues and the interrelationships between society, environment and development.
  
• present both conceptual and empirical information regarding the processes of managing development at a variety of spatial scales.
  
• provide students with opportunities to link theoretical principles with practical, topical and accessible case studies as they consider the impact of developmental management policies on a number of sectors at a range of scales.

Assessment (10 ECTs)

Continuous Assessment      (100%)

- 2 x 3000-word term papers or equivalent

Some key readings

J. Agyeman, J.D. Bullard and B. Evans (eds) (2003) Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World. Boston: MIT Press

P. Carmody (2007) Neoliberalism, Civil Society and Security in Africa. New York: Palgrave MacMillan

V. Deasi and R.B. Potter (eds) (2002) The Companion to Development Studies. London: Hodder Arnold

B. Potter, T. Binns, J.A. Elliott and D. Smith (2008) Geographies of Development: An Introduction to Development Studies, Third Edition. Harlow, Essex: Pearson

J. Rapley (2002) Understanding Development: Theory and Practice in the Third World, Second Edition. London: Lynne Rienner

M. Whitehead (2007) Spaces of Sustainability. London: Routledge

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility