ICIS Grad Seminar Proposal

ICIS Graduate Seminar Fall, 2007

POLITICS, GOVERNANCE, AND DEVELOPMENT

Rick Doner Bruce Knauft Political Science Anthropology / ICIS

Description

The study of development is complex, and “development” itself, is multifaceted, contingent on context, and frequently contested. Even economists, often the most confident of social scientists, are increasingly cautious about previously robust generalizations concerning development. The international aid community, which has frequently allocated resources in the hope of stimulating development in less advantaged countries, finds in retrospect that many of its initiatives have failed or been highly equivocal. This graduate seminar is designed to recognize but not get bogged down in these issues.

In the first instance, the seminar explores the challenge of improving human well being. This topic comprises both income growth and broader indicators of welfare improvement. The focus here is on development as material improvement in people’s lives. As such, it allows us to consider a broad range of outcomes, including pure income growth, economic diversification, improvements in health or education, the welfare of particular groups (ethnic groups, women, children), the stability and cohesion of communities, and the relationship between socioeconomic classes or status groups. Underlying this focus is an interest in explaining growing and significant divergence in development outcomes. This focus does not exclude attention to the relations and tensions between development as material welfare and other types of development. Rather, it anchors investigation in the former.

Second and related, we are interested in the sustainability of development – the degree to which it is or can be sustained under different conditions over time. The emphasis here is not on environmental sustainability per se, although such issues may certainly be relevant. Rather, attention is on the “input” side, i.e., on factors that allow societies to maintain increasing levels of well-being. Here the scale of analysis may encompass a shift from, for example, reducing TB or adjusting an exchange rate to establishing the capacity to maintain good health services or macroeconomic policies. A working assumption is that sustainable development requires socio-political support through engagement by diverse constituencies or stakeholders, as well as institutional capacities through which people are engaged and goods and services are produced.

A third feature of the seminar is thus its focus on the institutional and political factors influencing development – both actual features and their perception, assertion, and contestation. At one level, we will explore the impact of different norms, rules, and organizations on economic development. In this regard, we can view the challenge of

economic development as a collective action problem that is tackled with varying results by a range of “governance” institutions and initiatives under different conditions. These articulate with a broad range of social issues and organizational groups, e.g., property rights, ethnic networks, women’s groups, religious organizations, business associations, labor unions, diversified conglomerates, and/or multinational corporations. Our working assumption here is that different components and levels of development may be facilitated by different kinds of institutional arrangements and capacities under different conditions. The degree to which these correspondences are consistent across cases and circumstances is an empirical question. Depending on the case, these results may or may not be consistent with the claims or assertions of governments or other organizations or interest groups. Underlying these dynamics is variation between different types of material or social betterment. It is one thing to devalue an exchange rate, quite another to reduce the incidence of a disease – or improve literacy.

Politically, we will explore the pressures under which political leaders encourage / discourage various institutions and development-seeking policies. The pressures that inform such arrangements can include desire to profit from natural resources (e.g., diamonds, oil), to temper external economic shocks, to guard against popular rebellions or external security threats, or to benefit from access to new technology, foreign aid, and a range of other assets.

In sum, the seminar will consider the relationship between the material outcomes and social impacts of economic development; its political, governmental, and institutional context; and the degree to which economic development is or can be sustained over time. In this regard, the seminar considers what may be taken as the objective conditions of economic development as well as the political institutions and cultural forms through which economic development is variously achieved or not, asserted, and contested. The seminar considers economic development both as a real, ascertainable process and also as a condition of social, political, and ideological aspiration and assertion. Neither of these processes subsumes the other; their variable relationship is itself important

In terms of method, the seminar will emphasize diverse approaches to research, including qualitative as well as quantitative approaches that take positivist perspectives as the point of departure. The intention is not to exclude interpretive or constructivist approaches but to assess the degree to which assertions and claims about development are consistent with the best evidence available. Further, the seminar will address development across different levels and through the lens of specific issues. Although these will depend to some extent on student interests, they will likely include public health, industrialization, gender, education, and environmental issues.

This seminar is designed to be dialogic across social scientific perspectives and methodologies, world areas, and levels of analysis – from micro to macro. A spirit of open dialogue and constructive debated is encouraged by the two instructors per their own respective perspectives on development, e.g., political science, on the one hand, and cultural anthropology, on the other.

Requirements

The seminar is designed to stimulate and support graduate student research on development issues and, indirectly, to feed into an emerging “development studies” initiative at Emory. Students are expected not only to come prepared to discuss the assigned reading but also to use the seminar to initiate or develop their own research project. In addition to theoretical and empirical engagement, this requires engaging issues of methodology. Students will be graded on seminar participation, reaction papers, and on a final research project or draft research proposal.

The seminar will meet once a week in the afternoon or early evening.