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TI 706

Field-Based Learning

Dr Alma Clavin, Dr John Morrissey and Dr Kathy Reilly

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Please click below for various module details:

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

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Module rationale

This module is designed to enable students to synthesise both theoretical and practical concerns in bringing critical thinking to issues of environment, society and development in the field. In 2010-2011, the module will culminate in a fieldtrip to Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where students will be intersecting with the development work of the European Union, UN agencies and various civil society organisations and NGOs. 'Field-Based Learning' does not only consider how to 'apply academic critical knowledge in the field', but also how to 'learn in the field by experience', through participation with both practitioners and local communities. The module is also an excellent conceptual space to think through issues of post-development, cultures of dependency, stakeholder challenges, pragmatism and strategic essentialism. In connecting with work on the ground in Sarajevo of UN agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), a key challenge will involve thinking through the scalar nature of all forms of development, in which initiatives on the ground are framed by broader geopolitical, economic and institutional structures that both enable and hinder development in complex ways.

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Key learning outcomes

• to enable student’s abilities to apply critical thinking in field-based contexts by recognising and understanding the scalar nature of development initiatives, and by thinking through the broader geopolitical, economic and institutional structures through which development works
  
  
• to extend the learning environment of students through direct transfer and application of a range of geographical theoretical and technical approaches to environment-society relations and development work
  
  
• to develop students’ competences to undertake and manage self-directed research and learning, work productively in a team context, and present findings professionally and comprehensively in both written and oral forms
  
  
• to encourage the practical skills of doing effective action research in collaboration with development practitioners and local populations on the ground

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Assessment (10 ECTS)

Continuous assessment (100%)

• 1000-word Mapping Project Assignment (individual - 20%)
• 4000-word Development Research Proposal (group - 60%)
• 1000-word Reflective Fieldwork Journal (individual - 20%)

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Some key readings

D. Campbell (1998) National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

D. Chollet (2005) The Road to the Dayton Accords: A Study of American Statecraft. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

C. Dahlman and G. Ó Tuathail (2006) Bosnia’s Third Geopolitical Space: Nationalist Separatism and International Supervision in Bosnia’s Brcko District. Geopolitics 11(4): 651-675

A. Jeffrey (2007) The Geopolitical Framing of Localized Struggles: NGOs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Development and Change 38(2): 251-274

G. Ó Tuathail (1999) The Ethnic Cleansing of a “Safe Area”: The Fall of Srebrenica and the Ethics of UN-Governmentality. In: J. Proctor and D. Smith (eds) Geography and Ethics : Journeys in a Moral Terrain. London: Routledge, pp. 120-131

G. Ó Tuathail (2002) Theorizing Practical Geopolitical Reasoning: The Case of US Policy towards Bosnia in 1992. Political Geography 21(5): 601-628

    

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