Against Development: International Affairs Otherwise

3 units

One of the key tenets of 20th-century geopolitics -- from various models of modernization theory to contemporary understandings of neoclassical and neoliberal theory -- has been the ideal of development as a key goal to address economic and political inequalities in the world system. This course focuses on different lines of thinking that challenge this worldview. We examine the work of both global north dissident thinkers and global south traditions of thinking, such as dependency theory, decolonialism, and liberation philosophy. The course will depart from critiques of the idea of development as an extension of colonialism and imperialism by authors like John Patrick Leary and Arturo Escobar. It will continue to discuss critiques of the contemporary geopolitical and geo-economic orders from the perspective of global south countries through concepts such as necropolitics (Achille Mbembe), gore capitalism (Sayak Valencia) and slow violence (Rob Nixon). The course will conclude with the study of theories that propose postdevelopmental and counterdevelopmental models of economic organization and political engagement, including decolonialism (Macarena Gómez Barris and others), Epistemologies of the South (Boaventure de Sousa Santos) and Neoliberalism from Below (Verónica Gago).