MA Politics, Development & the Global South

“Development” has been a long-desired goal for societies and peoples, and the pursuit of it has been decisive in shaping the modern world. Most mainstream takes on development treat it as an uncontested term; something the Global North already has, but which the Global South lacks, and which those trained in the ‘subject’ can help it acquire.

By contrast, you'll learn to approach development as the site of contestation. Major changes in recent decades, including the emergence of new geopolitical powers on the international stage, growing challenges to neoliberal dogmas, heightened concern with increasing global inequality, and recognition of the danger of ecological devastation, have meant that ‘development’ – what it means and how it is to be achieved – has become a site of struggle, one where new forms of politics have emerged.

You'll examine these changes and this contestation, and asks, how can we talk about development in the 21st century? The module is intended to last one academic term (10 weeks) and will be dealing with some of the most important topics in contemporary development studies, including

• Is development another name for “modernity”?
• What are the differing (and sometimes opposing) definitions of development?
• Development and the politics of knowledge
• The developmental state
• Development and the global civil society: NGO´s, celebrities and the power of philanthropy
• Sustainability and democracy
• Entrepreneurs from below
• Ecological concerns
• Gender questions
• Post development and de-growth.

This module aims to raise questions about whether the concepts and categories through which we seek knowledge of the world are adequate to the task. You'll critically examine categories of the social sciences and humanities that are usually simply presupposed and ’applied', and which, despite their Western or European origins, are assumed to be ’universal'.

You'll closely examine some of the most important theoretical writings of the post-WWII period, focusing upon books and debates which had repercussions far beyond their immediate disciplinary boundaries, including books by Kuhn, MacIntyre, Foucault, Said, and others.

You'll explore the claim(s) that far from being objective and universal, our knowledge is shaped by culture, history and politics. In seminars we ask, can different ’conceptual schemes', ’paradigms' or ’traditions' be compared to see which one is better, or are they incommensurable? Do theories and explanations triumph over rival theories because they are ’better'- or for other reasons? The module additionally juxtaposes these questions to texts and debates, mostly issuing from the Global South, that develop radically different approaches to knowledge and self-consciously address questions regarding the politics of knowledge This module requires students not simply to advance their knowledge of politics, but to explore the politics of knowledge, and to do so, in particular, by enquiring into whether the categories and concepts of the social sciences are genuinely international and universal, or merely modern/Western and parochial.

You will complete a 10,000 word dissertation

There is nothing new to the concept that space is infused and structured according to dominant forms of power in society - be they nationalism, neo-liberalism, the state, or patriarchy - and that such articulations have corresponding representational forms in maps, charts, surveys, and censuses. Far from being the neutral scientific endeavour it is often claimed to be, cartography has always tended to reinforce and replicate dominant spatial logics, erasing indigenous claims to land, ostracising minorities from the political landscape, and setting racial, gender and class hierarchies (quite literally) in stone, brick and asphalt.

Increasingly, however, we are seeing a growing number of both artists and social movements coming to an awareness that our representations of space carry with them an intendant politics. Intent on redressing this imbalance, counter-mapping is the still somewhat speculative practice of harnessing dominant representational strategies in an effort to invert, subvert, and make clear what has been erased in an effort to seek political change. From feminist re-mappings of the city according to safe and dangerous places, to indigenous narratives of ancestral wanderings; from students co-opting google maps to avoid police tactics of ‘kettling’, to artist Janet Cardiff’s memory walks; from local anarchist groups revealing locations of CCTV cameras in Camberwell Green, to W.G. Sebald’s literary re-mapping of East Anglia.

This module not only studies emerging forms of counter-mapping, but encourages students to engage in their own practice of re-mapping, re-walking, and re-appropriating the cityscape.

The module will consist of weekly 2hr seminars devoted to both the study of emerging trends in counter-mapping as a practice, as well as to practical workshops and site visits determined each year by the module convenor based on student interests and types of projects undertaken. Topics covered will include:

• Introduction to the politics of space and mapping
• Colonial cartographies / indigenous resistances
• Walking as critical practice
• Feminist and Queer reappraisals of space Artistic interventions using cartography

This module will introduce you to the main theoretical perspectives that inform the discipline of International Relations. While the main focus is on contemporary theoretical trends and developments, a guiding rationale is that current international theory emerges out of and in an ongoing critical relationship with the discipline’s theoretical heritage that reaches back until at least the beginning of the twentieth century.

You'll explore the claim that IR theory exists in a dialectic with contemporary processes, and practices of world politics, which it both reflects and influences. You'll be encouraged to think critically about how theories might help us to explain and understand key themes and events, both historical and contemporary, that constitute the subject matter of the discipline of International Relations, broadly understood .

The module falls loosely into two halves. The first, which addresses the intellectual history of IR theory; identifies the uniqueness of the IR as a distinct discipline; introduces three of the dominant intellectual traditions: Realism, Liberalism and the theory of International Society; and considers the status of IR as a political science. The second half engages with some of the most significant theories challenging mainstream traditions since the end of the Cold War. Often identified as ‘critical’, these theories - Constructivist, Marxist, Feminist, Poststructural and Postcolonial - are evaluated for their ability to i) critique the epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions of mainstream theories and ii) to present coherent alternative theories of International Relations.

In this module, you'll explore the politics of human rights and the challenges of securing rights in the contemporary context. You'll engage critically with theory, drawing on political philosophy, legal theory and international relations approaches to defining and critiquing human rights. You'll also focus on case studies, looking in depth at key contemporary human rights struggles and issues.

You'll begin with an introduction to the state of the debate on human rights politics, then examine the major theories and political concepts underpinning modern understandings of human rights and the political and legal institutions established to promote and protect human rights. You'll also consider the role of human rights actors, including transnational advocacy networks, social movements and NGOs, analysing their approaches and methods. You'll explore intersections between human rights, and the politics of humanitarianism and development where relevant, examining the spectrum of human rights violations and contestations, ranging from civil and political, to social and economic rights.

The module employs a problem-based approach, involving participants in identifying and analysing critical human rights problems through individual research and interactions with practitioners. Students will each produce a research-based essay, which will be developed in stages and with supervision, including through a formative presentation. The module is designed to develop knowledge and understanding of human rights as concept, law and practice and to evaluate the significance and potential of human rights in the context of contemporary politics.

This module will give you a critical grounding in contemporary debates around Islam and the political as well as delineate the plural and agonistic nature of Muslim political ideologies and practices over the course of the last century. Is Islam an inherently political religion as many Orientalists have contended? Why has this question been repeatedly posed through to the present? Is there such a thing as a “Muslim politics”? How has Muslim political activism found itself Othered and stigmatised in recent decades and why has such activism provoked questions over the legitimacy of political engagement by Muslims? How have Muslims been historically racialised and what connections can be drawn between the legacy of Orientalism, colonial racisms and contemporary Islamophobia? Furthermore, how might we complicate mainstream understandings of “fundamentalism” and “Islamic law” and the relationship between Muslim political practices, liberal citizenship, secularism, resistance and the impact of Western colonialism and/or imperialism in the Islamicate world?  

Islam, Revolution & Empire will also introduce you to manifold contemporary political discourses and practices in the Islamicate world – from the seemingly interminable debate over Islamic feminism, women’s agency and the veil, to anti-colonial Islam(s), Islamic liberation theology and black internationalism, Kurdish anarchism and democratic confederalism and Arab and Iranian socialisms. The module aims to help you rethink the relationship between “Islam” and the political, as well as how Islam has been marshalled as a political category, and found itself challenged and critiqued for disparate ends, and thereby nuance their understanding of the relationship between politics, revolution and religion in the “Muslim world” and the imperial metropole itself. The module will problematise such categories as “fundamentalism”, “political Islam”, “extremist versus moderate”, the figure of “the radical”, and a wider lexicon which has proliferated in the wake of September 11, 2001 and the inauguration of the “War on Terror”; a lexicon and hegemonic “common sense” that continues to dominate politicians and media discussions of Muslims and politics at both home and the broader Islamicate world.  

This module will introduce you to the main approaches, methods and debates in the emerging sub-discipline of comparative political thought. You'll explore central intellectual discussions over the nature of both ‘comparison’ and ‘thought’, whilst striving to develop an original and innovative approach to the field, moving towards a truly ‘global’ political thought. The module is designed for students who are interested in deepening their understanding of relevant non-Western canons and assess key areas of tension with Western political and legal thinking.

The first part of the module will give you an introduction to key methodological and theoretical approaches to comparative political thought. You'll examine relevant debates in this newly established discipline (e.g., Mignolo, Isin, Santos, etc.). You'' then pursue a specialist insight in the non-West, looking at a variety of intellectual/philosophical canons. This part of the course highlights the practical relevance of non-Western texts and traditions for present-day issues and contemporary struggles across the globe, whilst addressing the emergence of new political imaginaries and conceptual tools that challenge conventional concepts in international law and politics.

The central goal of this module is to allow you examine and reflect upon the nature, function and operation of art and popular culture in times of war and conflict. Focusing largely on contemporary and 20th century visual production, you'll draw on a selection of artworks and visual examples to critically address the following key questions:

1. What is the role of the artist/artwork in times of war and crisis?
2. Can war and terror be thought of as ‘aesthetic’ or even ‘sublime’?
3. What political, cultural and moral implications are at stake in the representation and mediation of suffering?
4. ‘War art’ or ‘war porn’?
5. What is the nature of the relationship between art, terror and terrorism?
6. What role do art and images play in the relay of historical violence and in a broader politics of memory?
7. Can the experience of pain be woven into the fabric of the image?
8. What do images have to do, if anything with bare life?
9. How is the status of the ‘real’ affected by its documentation?
10. How do art, images and monuments of war and conflict, shape as well as preserve memories of war and conflict?

Looking at key contemporary and ‘historical’ artworks and events, this module cuts across historical trajectories in order to examine both the representation of violence and the violence of representation. You'll investigate the various roles of art and visual culture in relation to the two World Wars, the Cold War, the cultural and ideological battles of the 1960s and 70s, the ‘armchair’ wars, the so-called ‘war on terror’ and many other conflicts in recent years. Using Agamben, Baudrillard, Virilio, Butler and others, you'll consider the impact of military surveillance techniques on culture, both in terms of art practices and more broadly, as experienced in everyday culture. You'll reflect on artists’ enduring fascination with war and terror and shows how art can be understood as a form of politics, knowledge and experience.

Economic policy and regulation are shaped by experts and cultures of expertise. This has been true at an international level for over a century, never more so than with the design of the Bretton Woods system of international monetary regulation.

Today, the question of technocratic government in contexts such as the European Union is a divisive and urgent one. In this module, you'll pay critical, empirical and theoretical attention on the role of experts in economies, in national, international and neo-colonial contexts. You'll combine history of economics and philosophy of economics with political sociology of institutions and policy, to consider how knowledge and expertise are crucial to the governance, regulation and representation of economic activity and economic space.

Topics to be addressed include:

• The political ‘boundary work’ of economics as a discipline, and its consequences
• The neo-colonial power of economists in the global political economy
• Neoliberal expertise and technocracy
• The politics of international measures and standards
• Resistance to economic expertise and populism.

You'll be introduced to some key ideas on the politics of knowledge from Marion Fourcade, Anne-Marie Djelic, Michel Foucault, Philip Mirowski, Timothy Mitchell, Michel Callon, Steven Shapin and others.

Politics is an activity that regularly draws upon, and seeks to shape, subjective motivations and emotional dispositions. Psychoanalysis encourages us to understand these in terms of unconscious fantasies, repressed memories, and as unresolved psychic tensions that give rise to perverse, violent or inexplicable behaviours and obsessions. States, political elites, and movements address such tensions in numerous ways, to stir public feelings and to incite support.

In this module, you'll examine how psychoanalytic theory can contribute to the analysis of politics, particularly of the way public language and memory express desires for power, subjugation, or even reparation. You'll focus primarily on the texts of Freud, Klein and Lacan to develop analytical insights to understand contemporary events. 

This module combines a variety of approaches from history, sociology, and political economy in the study of the global political economy. You'll focus on the connection between global economic integration and domestic socio-economic transformation in the making of the contemporary world order. Further, you'll explore how theories have shaped policies in the context of increasing integration of the global economy.

In the first segment of the module, you'll be introduced to some of the major scholarly contributions to political and economic theory and thought. You'll develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework incorporating political economy and world history that will greatly aid us in the subsequent analysis of the global political economy.

The second segment of the module will trace the historical development, structure, and function of the global political economy. The theoretical framework will include a brief introduction to the national income accounting and the balance of payments, the determination of exchange rates, and different exchange rate regimes. You'll employ this theory to better understand the historical evolution of the International Monetary System and the role of the International Financial Institutions in the global political economy.

The last segment of the module examines the origins and nature of global trade integration with a particular emphasis on the experience of developing countries in the global economy. Key topics include:

• The debate on trade and development
• Trade liberalisation
• The structure and function of the International Trading System
• Trade policies and development strategies
• The political economy of Foreign Direct Investment
• The impact of Transnational Corporations.

In this module, you'll explore a series of key contemporary issues of environment and development. You'll examine what it means to say we are living in the age of the ‘Anthropocene’. You'll then consider different perspectives for thinking about the environment in political economy terms of who wins, who loses, how and why.

Finally, you'll take this historical and conceptual grounding to the world, exploring the environmental politics of a range of key issues energy, climate change, food, water, waste and the uneven impacts of global environmental decay.

How can we develop critical knowledge about migration and borders? This module explores the multiple ways migration and borders are understood and experienced in different social, geographical, and political settings, as well as in different theoretical and discursive domains. Grounded in anthropological perspectives and methods, and branching out into film, literature, and art, the module aims to destabilise dominant understandings of migration and borders. In doing so, it critically unpacks core themes at the heart of contemporary debates on transnational movement – from race to belonging, from surveillance to gender. Throughout the module we will engage with a variety of theoretical, literary, and visual materials that focus on migrant lives and border crossings to develop a critical understanding of migration and the material, political, cultural, and linguistic borders that shape it.

The module offers a strong theoretical and conceptual basis for understanding critiques of race and racialisation historically and with regard to contemporary cultural contexts and political debates. In addition, our attention to media extends beyond media objects and technologies (texts, the audio-visual and new media platforms) to include how race and ethnicity are mediated and become in everyday life through complicated and changing interrelations between discourses, emotions and bodies. Attention is focused on an examination of race critical theories and related concepts that sociologists and cultural studies theorists have used to think about the formation of ethnic and racial identities in relation to social justice, specifically the social ideals of equality, valuing diversity, and the right to live in dignity. The module explores the challenges of reconciling the analytical rigour of race critical theories and practical aims of oppositional political agendas within the contemporary conjuncture. This exploration entails using a range of historical and contemporary examples to interrogate concepts and theoretical approaches. In this sense, we do not make a priori assumptions about the content and processes that are involved in racialisation, rather we investigate them in situ.

The module provides an exploration of recent themes in feminist and cultural theory. It also allows you to explore a series of case study topics within the broad fields of gender cultural studies. You will become aware of the range of theoretical resources mobilised by feminist writers to account for, or make sense of, how bodies take shape over time. You will become familiar with the feminist approaches to questions of affect and emotion.

This module revolves around contemporary debates in the anthropology of social movements. It considers the contribution of ethnographic approaches to activism and protest to the theorisation of politics, collective action and social change. The anti-globalisation movement, #occupy, the anti-corruption movement in India, the anti-foreclosures movement in Spain (PAH), the Landless Workers' Movement, right-wing extremism, feminist reproductive health activists, independent-living activism, queer movements and the Indigenous Environmental Network are some of the examples that the module will explore. Rather than 'explaining away' these movements, the pedagogical orientation of the module is based on learning from them, i.e. devising ways of conceptualising their practice, methods and transformative power. The module will also consider, as a transversal issue, the question of 'engaged' or 'militant' research - and more broadly the relationship between the production of academic and activist knowledges.

The assessment is constructed around student projects that will present, in a multimedia portfolio format, the result of research conducted about/with social movements.

This module examines the social, cultural and political history of postcolonial London, from the interwar era to the recent past. It explores histories of migration, citizenship and the politics of race, as well as shifting Black political formations, diasporas and identities. You will explore the interaction between the local and the global, and the reverberating impacts of British imperialism and decolonisation within the British metropolis. You will not only examine the postcolonial as an era of time, but also learn about postcolonial theory and intellectual traditions, and postcolonial approaches to writing British history.

The module has three major strands within it: 1) examining the meanings of postcolonialism, and interrogating shifting ideas of multiculturalism in London; 2) unpacking the history of Black London, and the politics of Black citizenship and race in the twentieth century; 3) exploring how ‘the postcolonial city’ has been represented, constructed and perceived in music, film, heritage and education, as well as processes of Black British community formation in London. Interdisciplinarity is a key feature of this module, and the intersections between history and sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, anthropology, politics, visual cultures, literary studies and music will be explored. London is the focus, but the module will situate postcolonial London in the wider historical and historiographical contexts of post-war, global Britain.