GEOG 383.12/705.99
GLOBALIZATION AND UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
Monday 13:10 – 16:00
Hunter North, Room 1004
Spring 2012
Instructor:
Office location:
Email:
Office hours:
Annie Spencer
Hunter North, Room 1032
aspencer@gc.cuny.edu (Include GEOG 383.12 or GEOG 705.99 in your
subject line and sign your full name. I do not respond to unsigned email
messages.)
Mondays 4:00 – 5:00 pm or by appointment
Brief description/purpose of course: This course will explore the overlapping and contested
worlds of two broad themes—‗globalization‘ and ‗uneven development.‘ We will begin with a
historical look at the emergence of colonialism and the production of the world into largely stillexisting spheres of rich and poor. From here we will survey the history of thought on the
question(s) of ‗development,‘ poverty reduction and economic growth. We will then move to
address the historical and present-day development industry, and critiques thereof, along with
newer poverty reduction strategies such as microfinance and alternative grassroots development
schemes. We will explore these emergences in the context of broader, global economic trends, as
well as in the context of state, multi-state and non-state actors.
Required textbooks: There are two texts for the course:
Peet, Richard and Elaine Hartwick. 2009. Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments,
Alternatives. Second Edition. The Guilford Press: New York.
Roy, Ananya. 2010. Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development. Routledge,
London.
The texts have been ordered through Shakespeare and Company and can be found online in new
and used editions.
Supplementary readings will be found on the course EReserve page through the Hunter College
Library.
Course evaluation: Students will be evaluated on the following criteria.
Class participation:
In-class presentation:
Annotated reading questions:
Research paper:
Final exam:
15 points
15 points
15 points
25 points
30 points
1
Expectations for Preparation and Participation: Students are required to come to class
prepared to discuss the readings and any discussion assignments given in the previous class.
Readings should be completed before the class period in which they will be discussed. Plan on
printing the reading always, and marking the text (highlighter, pen, post-its) as well as taking
notes. This will help you effectively participate in in-class discussions and group work. Students
who regularly demonstrate failure to effectively prepare for class will have points deducted from
the participation portion of their grade (15% of the total grade).
In-class Presentations: Each week a student will be responsible for starting the group
discussion by presenting on the week‘s readings. The presentation should provide necessary
context and background, a brief summary of the main arguments, and questions for the class.
Weekly Annotated Reading Questions: For each week, students will be expected to submit via
Blackboard an annotated, detailed question regarding the week‘s reading by Sunday night. The
question should make direct reference to a part of the text, citing page numbers and using direct
quotes where appropriate. Questions are meant to be analytical and demonstrate a thoughtful and
critical engagement with the text. These questions will shape the direction of our in-class
discussion. Students are required to submit questions for each week, except the week they are
presenting.
Research Paper: A 10 to 12-paged paper on a topic of the student‘s choosing and related to the
broad themes of the course. Topics MUST be approved. Students will submit a typed, twoparagraph proposal for their paper topics by Monday, February 27 at the latest.
Final Exam: Take-home, essay exam; the exam will be handed out during the last class period
on May 14. The exam must be turned in in-person during the class‘s scheduled exam period as
determined by the Hunter College Registrar‘s Office. The date will be announced in class.
Standards for written work: Your written work (the analytical essays and the final paper, etc.)
should conform to the following standards:
Papers should be typed, double spaced with one-inch margins, using a Times Roman or
other similar serif font. (Courier style fonts are not to be used.) Papers should be stapled
in the upper left hand corner. Plastic report covers should not be used.
Papers should cite sources and use the author-date style of referencing commonly used in
the discipline of geography. See a copy of the Annals of the Association of American
Geographers for examples.
Research papers should make use of sources from the World Wide Web only when the
source is a government agency or other reliable institution, and online version of a print
resource (i.e. article databases), or when it is the online source itself that is the subject of
the research. See me concerning the appropriateness of using sources from the Web.
You should not use Wikipedia or other online encyclopedic references in a college level
paper.
Writing help
2
Students who need help with writing are encouraged to take advantage of the Hunter College
Writing center. The Reading/Writing Center is located in Room 416, Thomas Hunter Building.
Drop-in hours and more information can be found here: http://rwc.hunter.cuny.edu/index.html
Classroom policies: Participation is 15 percent of the class grade. Students should not expect to
receive full credit for participation if they are habitually absent, late, sleeping, using electronic
devices or are otherwise visibly not engaged in or disruptive of the class discussion. Full
participation credit will require students to regularly attend class with printed copies of the
assigned reading. Students will be expected to demonstrate that they have read and engaged
critically with the week‘s readings.
Hunter College statement on Academic Integrity: Hunter College regards acts of academic
dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on examinations, obtaining unfair advantage, and falsification
of records and official documents) as serious offenses against the values of intellectual honesty.
The College is committed to enforcing CUNY Policy on Academic Integrity and will pursue cases
of academic dishonesty according to the Hunter College Academic Integrity Procedures.
Plagiarism, dishonesty, or cheating in any portion of the work required for this course will be
punished to the full extent allowed according to Hunter College regulations.
Note on late assignments/missed exams: If you will not be able to complete an assignment
on time, please inform me of this at least one day prior to the due date. Late assignments will
ONLY be accepted if a prior arrangement has been made with me and appropriate circumstances
warrant additional time. Late assignments without appropriate circumstance/documentation will
be penalized (5 points off per day late).
Students should make every effort not to miss the in-class midterm exam. If you miss the exam,
you must (1) contact me within 48 hours of the missed exam, (2) present acceptable
documentation for your absence, and (3) be available for the make-up exam (there will be one
make-up exam day held outside of class for those eligible). A make-up exam will cover the same
material as the regular exam but will not be the same exam.
Policy on Incomplete (IN) and Credit/No-Credit (CR/NC) grades: A final grade of IN
(incomplete) will not be given except under the most extraordinary, and documented,
circumstances. Only students who have completed ALL course requirements including all writing
assignments, midterm and final exams will be eligible for a final grade of CR/NC.
Disclaimer: Assignment due dates and readings may change from what is listed in this syllabus
depending on the needs of the class and in unforeseen events such as school closures. I will give
ample warning of any changes. Students will be responsible for staying abreast of any such
revisions.
3
SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS
Week 1, January 30: Introduction and course overview
No assigned reading
Monday, February 6: Theories of Development I
Peet & Hartwick Chapter 1 – ―Development‖ pp. 1 – 22
Sen, Amartya. 1999. ‗The Ends and Means of Development.‘ Chapter 2 in his Development
as Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf, pp. 35-53.
Additional, TBD.
Monday, February 13: NO CLASS
Monday, February 20: NO CLASS
Tuesday, February 21: Theories of Development II
Peet and Harwick: Chapter 2 ―Classical and Neoclassical Economics‖ pp. 23 – 52 (all) and
Chapter 3, pp. 53 – 77 (stop before ‗Neoliberalism‘)
MacKinnon, Danny & Andrew Cumbers. 2007. ―Geographies of Development‖ pp. 252
– 276, in, An Introduction to Economic Geography: Globalization, Uneven Development and Place,
Prentice Hall: New York.
Monday, February 27: Pre-Colonial Trade, Colonialism, The Making of the ‗Third World‘
Prashad, Vijay. 2007. Introduction and Chapter 1, ―Paris,‖ pp. xv – 15 in The Darker
Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. Verso: New York.
Davis, Mike. 2001. Introduction and parts of Chapter 9, ―The Origins of the Third
World, pp. 1 – 16 and 276 – 281 in Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making
of the Third World. Verso: New York.
Porter, Philip and Eric Sheppard. 1995. Chapter 14, ―The historical geography of
colonialism and the slave trade‖ and Chapter 15, ―Colonialism as a spatial and labor
control system,‖ in A World of Difference. Guilford Press, New York.
Monday, March 5: Bretton Woods & The Development Doctrine
Peet, Richard. 2009. Selections from Unholy Trinity. (TBD). Zed Books: New York.
Rostow, W. W. 1960. The Stages of Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 4-16, 84-86. URL:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ipe/rostow.htm
Truman, Harry S. January 20, 1949. Inaugural Address. URL:
http://trumanlibrary.org/calendar/viewpapers.php?pid=1030
Monday, March 12: Neoliberalism, Structural Adjustment & The Washington Consensus
Peet and Hartwick: rest of Chapter 3, pp. 78 - 102
Peet, Richard. 2009. Chapter 1 ―Globalism and Neoliberalism,‖ pp. 1 – 36 in Unholy
Trinity. Zed Books: New York.
4
Harvey, David. 2005. Introduction and Chapter 1 ―Freedom‘s Just Another Word…,‖ pp.
1 – 38 in A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
Klein, Naomi. 2007. Selections from The Shock Doctrine. (TBD)
Monday, March 19: Critiques of Development Theory
Peet and Hartwick: Chapter 5
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. ‗The rise & future demise of the world capitalist system,‖ in
Comparitive Studies in Society and World History 16, pp. 387 – 415.
Robinson, Cedric. Selections from Black Marxism (TBD)
Smith, Neil. Selections from Uneven Development (TBD)
Monday, March 26: Development Policy Case Study: Agriculture & The Green Revolution
Dicken, Peter. 2011. ―‘We Are What We Eat‘: The Agro-Food Industries,‖ pp. 271 – 300‘
in Global Shift: Mapping The Changing Contours of the World Economy. Guilford: New York.
Borlaug, Norman. 1970. Nobel Address.
Gates Foundation. 2010. Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa: Good Seeds, Better Lives for
Poor Farmers. Pp. 1 – 7.
Shiva, Vandana. 1991. Selections from The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World
Agriculture, Ecology and Politics. Zed Books: London.
Katz, Cindi. 1991. ―An Agricultural Project Comes to Town: Consequences of an
Encounter in Sudan.‖ In Social Text, November 28, 1991.
Monday, April 2: The WTO Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Social Movements
Borras, Saturnino. 2010. ―The Politics of Transnational Agrarian Movements,‖ in
Development and Change 41(5), pp. 771 – 803.
Martinez-Torres, Maria Elena and Peter M. Rosset. ―La Via Campesina: the Birth and
Evolution of a Transnational Social Movement,‖ in Journal of Peasant Studies 37(1), pp. 149
– 175.
Patel, Raj. Selections on the Doha Development Round (TBD).
Monday, April 9: NO CLASS – SPRING BREAK
Monday, April 16: Further Critiques: Feminism, Post-Structuralism & Post-Colonialism
Peet and Hartwick: Chapters 6 and 7, pp. 196 – 274
Mies, Maria. 1986. ―Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labor,‖ pp. 44 – 73 in
Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Zed Books: London.
Escobar, Arturo. Selections from Encountering Development (TBD)
Monday, April 23: Development Policy Case Study: Large-Scale Infrastructure
Ahmed, Waquar. 2007. ―Neoliberalism and Contested Policies of the Power Industry in
India,‖ in Industrial Geographer 5(1), pp. 44 – 57.
Ferguson, James. 1994. Selections from The Anti-Politics Machine. (TBD)
Additional, TBD.
5
Monday, April 30: Millennial Development
United Nations Millennium Goals:
o UN Millennium Declaration 2000:
http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf
o Millennium Goals Progress Report 2010:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202010%20En%20
r15%20-low%20res%2020100615%20-.pdf
Sanchez, Pedro et al. 2007.‗The African Millennium Villages.‘ Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. URL:
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/43/16775.long
Roy, Ananya. 2010. Chapter 1, ―Small Worlds: The Democratization of Capital and
Development,‖ and Chapter 2, ―Global Order: Circuits of Capital and Truth,‖ In Poverty
Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development, pp. 1 – 88.
Monday, May 7: Microfinance & Debt
Roy, Ananya. 2010. Chapter3, ―Dissent at the Margins: Development and the Bangladesh
Paradox,‖ and Chapter 4, ―The Pollution of Free Money: Debt, Discipline and
Dependence in the Middle East,‖ In Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of
Development, pp. pp. 89 - 186.
Selected news articles on microfinance (TBD)
Graeber, David. 2010. Selections from Debt: the first 5,000 Years.
Monday, May 14: Wrap-up, Retrospective Discussion
Roy, Chapter 5. Pp. 187 – 222.
Additional, TBD.
May 17 – 24: (Date TBA) FINAL EXAM DUE – must be handed in in person.
6