UCL A
Department of African American Studies and International Development Studies
IDS 140: Decolonizing Political Economy: Colonialism and Development
Professor Alden Young Spring 2021 aldenyoung@ucla.edu
Live class meeting: Wednesday 9:30-10:45 am (Pacific Standard Time)
Office Hours: Wednesday 11:30 am-12:30 pm or by appointment. Office hours will be collective unless you schedule an individual meeting.
Teaching Assistants:
Jennifer Hamilton jaham93@gmail.com
Andrew Ernesto Flores andeflore@ucla.edu
This course introduces students to the approaches and intellectual traditions of critical development studies. The violence of colonization and the struggle for decolonization were two of the defining processes of the Twentieth Century. This course begins by asking how development as a global good can be reconciled with its origins in colonialism. Second, we ask how development became a hegemonic way of imagining decolonization. This course will focus in particular on voices of critique and it pays special emphasis to the models of development that emerged from Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. We will end by discussing the relationship between rival notions of development and competing ideas of international relations.
Temporarily this course begins with the Age of European Overseas Empires and continues to the Present. The first half of the course will focus on how development as a concept emerged historically in conjunction with Empire, Imperialism and Colonialism. We will then discuss how the emergence of Empires, gave rise to critiques and the ways in which these critiques lay the foundations for our contemporary notions of development and dreams of decolonization. This section will conclude by asking how decolonization has been imagined historically.
The second part of the course will examine the following questions in the post- colonial age. We will examine how intellectuals have tried to balance conceptions of justice and freedom within the paradigm of development. We will discuss the extent to which the post-colonial state has been imagined as successful and the extent to
which it is seen as a failure. In particular, we will explore the endurance of the condition of post-coloniality, when does the post-colonial end? We will ask if post- colonialism ends with development. How have different thinkers wrestled with these problems and the possible trade-offs between catching-up, industrializing, creating a consumer society and concerns about inequality and climate change? In the end we will ask what different thinkers believed were the appropriate scales for development thinking, the locality, the nation-state, the region or the globe. Reflecting on these questions this course will also call into question the relationship between decolonization and development.
Objectives. In this course, students will:
Develop a critical analytical lens to evaluate major debates about global development and colonialism and decolonization,
Identify the structural and historical conditions that have given rise to divergent conceptions of development and global notions of justice and fairness,
Explain how key actors and institutions use history to shape moral and ethical arguments,
Sharpen the understanding of the historical and specific origins of contemporary macro-concepts,
Come to understand the divergent ways in which race, gender, class and nationality shape and constrain economic and social lives.
REQUIREMENTS
The course is taught through two lectures a week. One lecture will be uploaded at the beginning of each week. The second lecture will be held live on Wednesdays. Except for the first week, class will only meet live on Wednesdays. Attendance at lecture is strongly recommended.
Students are required to complete a take-home midterm and a cumulative final exam. Students are also required to attend and participate in weekly discussion sections as well as to answer weekly prompts on their sections’ discussion boards.
The course involves a fairly heavy reading load, the completion of which is essential to
understanding the issues and controversies addressed in the lectures.
UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides mental health care and resources for all registered students, including short-term individual and/or group treatment, urgent services and referrals when needed. Your well-being is the number 1 priority of UCLA CAPS. Counselors available 24 hours a day by phone at (310) 825-0768. Further information is available at http://www.counseling.ucla.edu.
Grades:
Participation/Attendance: 20% Midterm Exam: 30%
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Final Exam: 50%
Lecture Topics and Reading Assignments:
Week 1: What is Development?
March 29th: Lecture 1: What is Development Studies?
Lecture 2: Liberalism and Development (Recorded)
Readings
Walter Rodney, “Some Questions on Development,” How Europe Underdeveloped Africa? (Black Classic Press, 2011 [1972]) p. 1-32.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, (Anchor Press, 1999) p. 1-13 Week 2: Abolition and Liberalism
April 5th: Lecture 3: Abolition (Recorded)
April 7th: Lecture 4: Legacies of Slavery (Live)
Readings
Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano Chs. 7-12
E. Ann McDougall, “Discourse and Distortion: Critical Reflections on Studying the Saharan Slave Trade,” Outre-Mers 89:336-337 (2002) pp. 195-227
Week 3: Colonial Economics
April 12th: Lecture 5: Good Governance and Balanced Books (Recorded) April 14th: Lecture 6: Debt and Bondage (Live)
Readings
John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review 6:1 (1953) pp. 1-15.
Debjani Bhattacharya, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta
(Cambridge University Press, 2018) p. 169-205
Speech by Gamal Abdul Nasser on the Nationalization of the Suez Canal (July 26, 1956)
Week 4: The Critique of Empire
April 19th: Lecture 7: A Liberal World Order (Recorded) April 21st: Lecture 8: Anticolonial Intellectuals (Live)
Readings
Adom Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self- Determination
(Princeton University Press, 2019) p. 37-106
Week 5: Midterm Take-Home Midterm
[Sections will not meet this week]
Week 6: Postcolonial Blues
May 3rd: Lecture 9: Communism, Socialism and War (Recorded) May 5th: Lecture 10: The State as Tyrant (live)
Readings
John Maynard Keynes, “The Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,”
Essays in
Persuasion (2010)
Abdul Khaliq Mahgoub, “By Virtue of Marxism, Your Honor,” (1959).
W. Arthur Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor,” The Manchester School 1954
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 2005 [1961]), p. 97-144
Week 7: Human Rights and the Market
May 10th: Lecture 11: Minorities, Dissidents and Rebel Movements (Recorded) May 13th: Lecture 12: The End of History (Live)
Readings
Mahmood Mamdani, “Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43:4 (2001) p. 651-664
Engseng Ho, “Empire Through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Boat,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46:2 (2002) p. 210-246
Week 8: Globalization or One World
May 17th: Lecture 13: Convergence and Divergence (Recorded)
May 19th: Lecture 14: Pax Americana or the Asian Century (Live)
Readings
Giovanni Arrighi, “The African Crisis—World Systemic and Regional Aspects,” The New Left Review 15 (2002) p. 6-36
Branko Milanovic, “The Clash of Capitalisms,” Foreign Affairs January/February 2020
Week 9: Contradictions, Disruptions and Aberrations
May 24th: Lecture 15: Deviant Globalization (Recorded)
May 26th: Lecture 16: Climate Change and Global Equity (Live)
Readings
Nils Gilman, “The Twin Insurgency,” The American Interest 9:6 (2014)
Noora Lori, Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 2019) p. 50-70
Simon Evans, “Analysis: Coronavirus Set to Cause Largest Ever Annual Fall in
CO2
Emissions,” Carbon Brief (April 2020)
Week 10: The Successes and Failures of Decolonization Memorial Day, May 31st Holiday
June 2nd: Lecture 17: The New Geographies of Capitalism
Readings:
Gareth A. Jones, “Where’s the Capital? A Geographical Essay,” British Journal of Sociology 65:4 (2014) p. 721-735
Vanessa A. Ogle, “‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event,” Past and Present 249:1 (2020): 213-249
Final Exam