Winter 2000
Department of Urban Planning
234A  City and Countryside in the Third World

Monday 2:00 to 4:50
Room: PPB 1256

Instructor: Stephen Commins
Office Hours: Monday 12:00-2:00; 5:00-6:00
Office: PPB 5361
e-mail: scommins@worldbank.org

This course examines why fifty years of "development" projects and global economic integration have achieved modest and contentious results in their efforts at resolving the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, and violence in many of the countries labeled "Third World". One central problem has been the way in which mainstream development thinking has classified or labeled people and the problems within the rubric of development. While the consideration and practice of development has become far more heterogeneous than in the past, the underlying construct of modernization and homogenization still echoes through most international development organizations and state programs.

One way to examine the development discourse is to explore the dynamics of economic and social decisions made by people who are not without history, and who live in diverse and complex settings----exploring how poverty is related to power and powerlessness. The core of this course seeks to go beneath mainstream development discourse by examining people and communities in ways different from the state or traditional development categories.

The definition of the "Third World" has imposed a set of images on the lives of billions of people whose identity and diverse histories have often been buried under definitions created by others. Terms such as "traditional" have implied static, background or inferior, without any acknowledgment of the history, culture or economic complexities in the lives of highly differentiated peoples. The Malthusian nightmare, the merging of millions of individuals into mindless hordes, is an example of how defining people as the "other" has shaped development policies and decisions.

In reality there is a tremendously rich texture in the lives of "poor" people wherever one encounters them in development practice. And, while "city and countryside" have often been defined as separate domains, the old/backward rural and the modernizing/energized urban, the present dynamics are quite different. It is often the case that the boundaries are thin, as millions of people move frequently from village to city and back again, in an increasingly circular migration pattern.

This course will examine various ways of looking at environment and livelihood relations, the emergence of up from the pavement movements in civil society, the complex aspects of gender relations and various facets of household, labor and access to resources. It will do this in the setting of questioning the traditionally singular definitions of development, poverty and environmental relations. It will also explore what Scott has termed "everyday forms of resistance" by recognizing that poor people are not passive victims or ignorant recipients of development

January 10: Introduction

January 17: The view from above

Reading: Scott, Seeing Like a State; Warren, Cultural Dimensions, Part I

January 24: The view from below

Reading: Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping; Warren, Cultural Dimensions, Part II

January 31: Up from the pavement

Reading: WRI, "Cities and the Environment"; WRI, "Urban Environment and Human Health"; Gilbert, "Work and Poverty During Economic Restructuring"; de Haan, "Rural-Urban Migration: The Case of India";

February 7: Dynamics of population, migration and gender

Reading: Kabeer, Reversed Realities

February 14: Gender and livelihoods

Reading : Kabeer, Reversed Realities;

February 21: environment/livelihoods

Reading: Warren, Cultural Dimensions, Part III, IV

February 28: social conflict

Reading: Goodhand, "Dancing with the Prince"; Agerbak, "Breaking the Cycle of Violence"; deJanvry;

March 6: development under siege

Reading: Scott, Seeing Like a State; Chambers, Whose Reality Counts?; Warren. Cultural Dimensions, Part VI

March 13: whose reality counts?

1. two critical review essays on two or three of the course readings

2. one major paper on a core theme of the course

Chambers, Whose Reality Counts?

Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping

Scott, Seeing Like a State

Warren, Cultural Dimensions of Development

Reserve readings