73342 - Geography And Policies Of Development

Course contents

Important notice

In order to enhance students' participation and interaction, students attending classes must read preliminarily the following book:

V. Desai, R. B. Potter, The companion to development studies, Hodder Education, London, 2008

Moreover students are requested to attend classes regularly and to be present during the first weeks when all information about the programme will be provided.

The course will be organized as follows:

FIRST PART

Introductory information about the course. Analysis of the concept of development within the field of development studies. Development in history and in international relations: from colonial empires to third world to developing countries; modernisation and development; from Washington to post Washington consensus. Analysis of the notion of development in social sciences in an historical and political perspective: idioms, concepts, debate. Human rights and development. Democratic transitions and the issues of governance, citizenship, ethnicity.

Recommendend readings:

A. Payne, N. Phillips, Development, Polity Press, Cambridge 2009

A. Pallotti, M. Zamponi, Le parole dello sviluppo, Carocci, Roma, 2014

SECOND PART

Ideas, assumptions and debate about notion and practices of aid effectiveness within the framework of international aid and cooperation will be discussed. The global partnership for economic development and the South-South cooperation.

Reading list:

G. Hyden, After the Paris Declaration: Taking on the Issue of Power, in Development Policy Review, 26, 3, 2008

E. Mawdsley, L. Savage, Sung-Mi Kim, A ‘post-aid world'? Paradigm shift in foreign aid and development cooperation at the 2011 Busan High Level Forum, in The Geographical Journal, 2013

R. Eyben, L. Savage, Emerging and Submerging Powers: Imagined Geographies in the New Development Partnership at the Busan Fourth High Level Forum, in Journal of Development Studies, 49, 4, 2013

P. Esteves, A. Manaíra, South–South cooperation and the international development battlefield: between the OECD and the UN, in Third World Quarterly , 35, 10, 2014
P. de Renzio, J. Seifert, South–South cooperation and the future of development assistance: mapping actors and options, in Third World Quarterly, 2014, 35, 10, 2014 A. Caliari, Analysis of Millennium Development Goal 8: A Global Partnership for Development, in Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 15, 2-3, 2014

THIRD PART

Analysis of the processes of political and social development in the rural areas of developing countries: access to land, citizenship, land reform and policies of rural development in an historical perspective. The relation between agriculture, development, poverty reduction, and food sovereignty will be discussed in the context of international development. Analysis of land reform programmes launched since the ‘90s in developing countries and of “land grabbing”. Case studies from different countries of developing countries will be discussed. This section will include some seminar activities.

Recommended readings:

H. Bernstein, Class dynamics of agrarian change, Kumarian Press; Sterling, VA, Halifax; Winnipeg Fernwood

Seminars on land reform and land grabbing, reading list:

C. Lund, Fragmented sovereignty: land reform and dispossession in Laos, in Journal of Peasant studies, 4, 1, 2011

M. B. Dwyer, The formalization fix? Land titling, land concessions and the politics of spatial transparency in Cambodia, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 2015, 42, 5

S. Undargaa, J. F. McCarthy, Beyond Property: Co-Management and Pastoral Resource Access in Mongolia, in World Development,77, 2016

Astuti R., McGregor A., Indigenous land claims or green grabs? Inclusions and exclusions within forest carbon politics in Indonesia, in Journal of Peasant Studies 2016

S. Granovsky-Larsen, Between the bullet and the bank: agrarian conflict and access to land in neoliberal Guatemala, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 40, 2, 2013

P. Bottazzi, S. Rist, Changing Land Rights Means Changing Society: The Sociopolitical Effects of Agrarian Reforms under the Government of Evo Morales, in Journal of Agrarian Change, 12, 4, 2012

A. Ezquerro-Canete, Poisoned, Dispossessed and Excluded: A Critique of the Neoliberal Soy Regime in Paraguay, in Journal of agrarian change, 16, 4, 2016

M. Albertus, A. Diaz-Cayeros, B. Magaloni, B. R. Weingast, Authoritarian Survival and Poverty Traps: Land Reform in Mexico, in World Development, 77, 2016

S. Greenberg, Agrarian reform and South Africa's agro-food system, in Journal of Peasant studies, 42, 5, 2015

S. Moyo, Three decades of agrarian reform in Zimbabwe, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 38, 3, 2011

B. Chinsinga, An Unfinished agenda in a neoliberal context: state, land and democracy in Malawi, in A. Pallotti, C. Tornimbeni (ed.), State, land and democracy in Southern Africa, Ashgate 2015

S. Bainville, Land rights issues in Africa: the contribution of agrarian systems research in Burkina Faso, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 44, 1, 2017

T. Lavers, Land grab as development strategy? The political economy of agricultural investment in Ethiopia, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 1, 2012

R. Smalley, E. Corbera, Large-scale land deals from the inside out: findings from Kenya's Tana Delta, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 3–4, 2012

Madeleine Fairbairn, Indirect Dispossession: Domestic Power Imbalances and Foreign Access to Land in Mozambique, in Development and Change 44, 2, 2013

M. Gingembre, Resistance or participation? Fighting against corporate land access amid political uncertainty in Madagascar, Journal of Peasant Studies 43, 3-4, 2015

R. H. Pedersen, Access to land reconsidered: The land grab, polycentric governance and Tanzania’s new wave land reform, in Geoforum, 72, 2016

R. Cramb, V. Manivong, J. C. Newby, K. Sothorn, P. Sibat, Alternatives to land grabbing: exploring conditions for smallholder inclusion in agricultural commodity chains in Southeast Asia, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 2016

M. Kenney-Lazar, Plantation rubber, land grabbing and social-property transformation in southern Laos, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 3–4, 2012

D. Paudel, Re-inventing the commons: community forestry as accumulation without dispossession in Nepal, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 43, 5, 2016

S. M. Borras Jr., J. C. Franco, S. Gómez, C. Kay, M. Spoor, Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 3–4, 2012

D. Ojeda, Green pretexts: Ecotourism, neoliberal conservation and land grabbing in Tayrona National Natural Park, Colombia, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 2, 2012

M. Urioste, Concentration and “foreignisation” of land in Bolivia, in Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 33, 4, 2012

D. E. Rocheleau, Networked, rooted and territorial: green grabbing and resistance in Chiapas, Journal of Peasant Studies, 2015, 42, 3–4

M. Gatto, M. Wollni, R. Asnawi, M. Qaim, Oil Palm Boom, Contract Farming, and Rural Economic Development: Village-Level Evidence from Indonesia, in World Development, 95, 2017

T. Moreda, Large-scale land acquisitions, state authority and indigenous local communities: insights from Ethiopia, in Third World Quarterly, 38, 3, 2017

A. Castellanos-Navarrete, K. Jansen, Oil palm expansion without enclosure: smallholders and environmental narratives, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 42, 3–4, 2015

 

Programme for students attending classes

Students attending classes must study the following texts

A. Pallotti, M. Zamponi, Le parole dello sviluppo, Carocci, Roma 2014

Henry Bernstein, Class dynamics of agrarian change, Kumarian Press; Sterling, VA, Halifax; Winnipeg, Fernwood

A. Payne, N. Phillips, Development, Polity Press, Cambridge 2009

And moreover: one article on choice for the second part and two articles for seminar activities.

Seminars activities will be assessed for the final examination

Programme for students not attending classes

A. Pallotti, M. Zamponi, Le parole dello sviluppo, Carocci, Roma, 2014

Henry Bernstein, Class dynamics of agrarian change, Kumarian press; Sterling, VA, Halifax; Winnipeg Fernwood

A. Payne, N. Phillips, Development, Polity Press, Cambridge 2009

D. Craig, D. Porter, Development Beyond Liberalism. Governance, Poverty Reduction and Political Economy, Routledge, Abingdon 2006 (introduction and chapters of Part I)

S. Moyo, P. Yeros (eds), Reclaiming the Nation, Pluto Press, London 2011

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliographical references are indicated jointly with the syllabus.

Teaching methods

Lectures, analysis and discussion of papers and bibliographical references. Some of the lectures will be organized as seminars with discussion of some of the readings indicated in the programme. Students are requested to present and to discuss the readings they have choosen under the teacher supervision. The discussion during classes will be evaluated for the final examination.

Assessment methods

The assessment of students, both for students attending and not attending classes, takes place through an oral examination aiming to evaluate the capacity of analysis and students' knowledge on concepts and debate about development issues in a political and historical perspective and about the main processes of transformation and of political and economic reforms in developing countries discussed during the course.

Teaching tools

Transparencies, maps, newspapers, documents and reports of international organisations.

Office hours

See the website of Mario Zamponi