Development, Resources & Justice: The Political Economy of Human Rights

Undergraduate / Graduate

Global climate change, the increase in authoritarian government worldwide, the COVID pandemic aftermath, disruptions of global supply chains, inflation, and deepening sovereign debt have fallen with particular ferocity on the post-colonial Global South. The World Bank's 2024 Poverty, Prosperity and Planet Report refers to a 'polycrisis' - multiple and interconnected crises occurring simultaneously - that has stalled or reversed the forces of globalization slowed human development, amplified the dilemmas of 'fragile and conflicted states' and unleashed powerful forces of dispossession condemning millions to lives of radical precarity. This course will focus on a set of problems associated with the contemporary political economy of basic resources - land, forests, food, energy, minerals, water, marine resources, shelter - and 'provisioning systems' from the particular vantage point of social justice and human rights, drawing upon case studies from Latin America, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. This course seeks to understand the sorts of conflicts and struggles over resources and extractive economies in postcolonial settings placed on a wider canvas of transnational capital flows, multi-lateral development institutions, neoliberal state policies, authoritarian populisms, NGOs and social movements. Connections will be made between resources politics in the Global South and the Global North.