Tag: Rural Development

Rural development in the Global South

February 11, 2021 | Education

Course Code: PNS0216 Language: English Distance course: Yes

A basic introduction to the subject rural development in the Global South, focusing on introducing key concepts and debating the issue of ‘development’ with a specific focus on the situations of rural areas across the global south.

The course consists of three blocks where each takes place during one week with about five activities (e.g. lectures, seminars). The first block focuses on a history of ideas in our subject while the latter two expand into two key contemporary themes developed in the field.

1. Rural development, post-colonialism, and beyond
The first block will provide an introduction to the evolution of thinking in rural development from more “mainstream” approaches to critical development studies, post-colonial critiques, and beyond.

2. Rural transformations
The second block will explore key thematic issues relating to rural transformations including: dynamics of agrarian change in the contemporary era; changing relationships between state, society, and the market; shifts in rural livelihoods; and social vulnerability and resilience.

3. Politics of natural resources and the environment
The third block will examine issues relating environmental politics, including: natural resource governance and contestation, the politics of “participation”, and continuity and change in global environmental agendas and their implications for welfare and justice of resource dependent populations.

For more information visit the course webpage.

Uneven geographical development

February 11, 2021 | Education

Course code: PNS0212
Language: English

This course is geared towards students of rural development studies, landscape planning/architecture, human geography, anthropology, sociology, environmental/agrarian history and other social sciences.

The purpose of the course is to undertake a close and critical reading of the foundational book entitled: Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space by Neil Smith, in order to understand:

  •  the roots and importance of the theory of uneven development in Marxian political economy and in this historical development of capitalism more generally;
  • the differences and connections between Smith’s theory and other theories of uneven development, such as dependency theory, World Systems theory, and older Marxist variants of the “theory of combined and unequal development”;
  • the reasons for and value of placing a theory of the production of nature at the center of the theory of uneven development;
  • the importance of a theory of the production of space to the theory of uneven development;
  • the degree to which this theory of uneven development can – and cannot – assist to understand differences and similarities in trajectories of development in the Global South and the Global North;
  • the degree to which theories of uneven development can – and cannot – assist to understand differences and interrelationships between urban and rural processes of development.

A central concern of the course will be examining what uneven development looks like on the ground – that is, how it is expressed and mediated in and through the geographical landscape. We will also seek to understand how the dynamics of uneven development have played out historically.

For more information visit the course webpage.