226 Bay State Road, Room 203. HI525: Development in Historical Perspective

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1 Professor Benjamin R. Siegel History Department, Boston University 226 Bay State Road, Room Seminar, Spring 2016: Tuesdays 9:00 AM - noon Room: HI 504 Office Hours: Tuesdays noon 5:00 PM HI525: Development in Historical Perspective Course Description For at least a century, the category of development has represented an important, contested set of practices and beliefs about how certain countries and communities might improve their conditions, or have their conditions improved. The project of development worldwide has had successes and failures, and has engendered a tremendous amount of controversy, even as its processes and assumptions have helped structure relationships between the West and the Global South. Decades ago, development was seen as an unquestionable good, but by the 1980s, scholars and practitioners were advancing serious critiques of its goals and assumptions. More recently, a new wave of practitioners has tried to reaffirm importance of development, taking into account the most trenchant critiques of the category. This course considers the category of development in historical context, and considers cases from around the world. We will first consider some theories for why certain countries enjoyed more favorable outcomes than others, and explore certain nineteenth- and early twentieth-century antecedents for the project of development, primarily but not exclusively located in the imperial world. We will examine practices of development in the decolonizing countries of Asia and Africa, and new international ideas and institutions that influenced the course of development in the wake of empire. After thinking through questions of modernization and the Cold War, we turn our attention to some important arguments and movements of the last two decades that have questioned, and then reaffirmed, the enterprise of development as a whole. Our goal in this course will not be to cast a verdict on the project of development as a whole, but to understand how development emerged as an important category of relationships and practices, and to make sense of the ways in which scholars and

2 practitioners have affirmed, challenged, and rethought this category. In a final paper, you will be asked to select a development project and analyze it historically, drawing upon some of the perspectives encountered in our shared readings. Course Materials The following books are on reserve in the library; you will likely find it useful to have your own copies of the books read in class. (These books may be acquired online or at a local bookstore, but have not been pre-ordered.) The remainder of the articles and other selections read in the class will be placed on Blackboard Learn. Each week s readings are to be read in their entirety before coming to class. Akhil Gupta, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011). James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015). David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Sherene Seikaly, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2015). Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001). Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Assignments and Evaluation As a research seminar, the weekly readings for this course will often be challenging: the volume to be read is significant and the perspectives are sometimes complex. The material will be drawn primarily from history, but we will draw in important readings from political science, economics, and anthropology. The readings each week have been selected so that they are in conversation with one another; I will mention a suggested order of reading or focus the week prior to each assignment. Completing all the reading before class will be important for the sake of our shared conversations and debates and is an essential requisite of the course and your grade in it. One student will be responsible for leading discussion each week; we will put together a schedule of class discussions on the first day of the semester. Students are encouraged, 2

3 though not required, to consult with the instructor prior to the class to discuss major points of the reading and strategies for discussion leading. I will take a back seat during our in-class discussions; it is therefore imperative that discussion leaders come prepared to lead approximately two hours of directed conversation. Our readings will help us prepare for a final research paper on a development project, broadly defined, anywhere in the world from the eighteenth century onwards. This paper will be fifteen to twenty pages for undergraduate seminar participants and thirty-five to forty for graduate students; graduate students will be encouraged to submit final papers to peer-reviewed journals for publication. At the beginning of our fifth session together (February 23, 2016), you will turn in a one-page proposal for your final paper, as well as a one-page analysis of a primary source that you will use for the same. At the beginning of our seventh session together (March 15, 2016), you will submit a prospectus and provisional bibliography for this paper. You will identify the key primary sources available on campus or via electronic resources that will inform your project, as well as some of the important existing literature on the subject. In our final class session, you will be expected to deliver a fifteen-minute presentation on the paper and your findings. The final paper is due by 5:00 PM on April 20, 2016, and will assessed a full letter grade penalty for each day it is late. Class attendance is mandatory; you are expected to arrive on time and remain for the entire class period. There will be no unexcused absences permitted, and if you are unable to attend a class session owing to illness or emergency, you must contact the instructor in advance. Unexcused absences will result in a third of a grade deduction each; missing more than three class meetings for any reason will result in forfeiting credit for the course. Computers and cell phones are not permitted in the classroom, unless the former are required for documented accessibility needs. Plagiarism is a serious offense and, if suspected, will be referred to the Dean s Office; a copy of Boston University s code of conduct is online at I encourage you to show up to office hours to discuss reading, your paper, or anything else. I will respond to all s within twenty-four hours but not necessarily on the same day that you write; I expect you to be accessible in a similar manner via your BU address. Substantive materials are to be discussed in office hours, not via . Final grades will be based on the following rubric: Participation and class session leadership: 25% Proposal and primary source analysis: 10% Prospectus / provisional bibliography: 15% End-of-semester presentation: 10% Final paper: 40% 3

4 Weekly Reading Schedule Week I: Defining Development (January 19, 2016) Ivan Illich, Development as Planned Poverty, in The Post-development Reader, ed. Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree (London: Zed Books, 1997). Gilbert Rist, Definitions of Development, in The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (London: Zed Books, 1997), Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, and The Perspective of Freedom, in Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), In-class assignment of class discussion leaders Week II: Debating the Origins of Inequality (January 26, 2016) Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). David S. Landes, Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?, The Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 2 (April 1, 2006): Week III: Empire, Climate, Population (February 2, 2016) Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001). Samantha Iyer, Colonial Population and the Idea of Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 1 (2013): Week IV: Colonial Logics and Postcolonial Consequence (February 9, 2016) Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). David Washbrook, The Rhetoric of Democracy and Development in Late Colonial India, in Nationalism, Democracy, and Development: State and Politics in India, ed. Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), No Class February 16, 2016 (Monday Class Schedule for Presidents Day Classes) Week V: New Nations, New Economies, New Subjects (February 23, 2016) Sherene Seikaly, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2015). Benjamin Siegel, Self-Help Which Ennobles a Nation : Development, Citizenship, and the Obligations of Eating in India s Austerity Years, Modern Asian Studies, November 20, 2015, One-page proposal and one-page primary source analysis due 4

5 Week VI: High Modernism and Planning in the Twentieth Century (March 1, 2016) James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Tania Murray Li, Beyond the State and Failed Schemes, American Anthropologist 107, no. 3 (2005): March 5, 2016 to March 13, 2016: Spring Break Week VII: Modernization and the Cold War: Thinking Big: (March 15, 2016) David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). David C. Engerman, Learning from the East: Soviet Experts and India in the Era of Competitive Coexistence, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 2 (2013): Prospectus and provisional bibliography due Week VIII: Modernization and the Cold War: Thinking Small (March 22, 2016) Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015). Nicole Sackley, The Village as Cold War Site: Experts, Development, and the History of Rural Reconstruction, Journal of Global History 6, no. 3 (2011): Week IX: Development Fantasies and the Anti-Politics Machine (March 29, 2016) James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Arturo Escobar, Power and Visibility: Development and the Invention and Management of the Third World, Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 4 (November 1, 1988): Week X: The New Optimists (April 5, 2016) Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011). "Planners Versus Searchers" and "The Legend of the Big Push, in William Easterly, The White Man s Burden: Why the West s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, Reprint edition (New York: Penguin Books, 2007). 5

6 Week XI: Individual Meetings on Student Papers (April 12, 2016) Week XII: Writing New Histories of Development (April 19, 2016) Akhil Gupta, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). Frederick Cooper, Writing the History of Development, Die Historiografie von Entwicklung. 8, no. 1 (June 2010): Week XIII: Student Presentations (April 26, 2016) Final papers due 5:00 PM, April 20,