General
Section outline
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Politics of Development
Master 1
2026-2027
CENSIER Amphi D02
Teacher: Florence Brisset-Foucault
Florence.brisset-foucault@univ-paris1.fr
(credit image: Bodys Isek Kingelez, La Ville Fantôme)
This course aims at familiarising students with critical approaches to development. While the literature mobilized to think these issues will originate from thinkers in Europe, Latin America, India and Africa, the case studies will be anchored in the African continent (North, South, East and West). Articulating the sociology of public action and the history and anthropology of development, it does not seek to assess development plans’ efficiency on their own terms, or to provide ‘solutions’ to particular ‘problems’ that would consensually seem 'obvious'. It aims, instead, at reaching a better understanding of the ways in which the definitions of both problems and solutions, as well as the way these projects are received by supposed 'beneficiaries' reflect transnational and local relations of power, as well as socially situated forms of knowledge. We will study the ways in which ‘development’ projects are concretely conceived, set up, and how they are received, understood and appropriated locally.
The course is organized in 12 sessions of 2 hours each. The work is based on readings, their critique, and the analysis of case studies.
Students are not expected to be already fluent in English and will not be assessed on their mastery of the language. However: everyone is expected to take this opportunity to practice their written and oral skills. My role will be to help you process and formulate your thinking in English, diversify your vocabulary, and hopefully feel more confident when taking the floor. I will also take particular care in making sure there is a balance between students’ levels of participation. We are all here to learn together.
Students have to carefully and critically read one text per week, starting week 2. You are expected to acquire an intimate knowledge of the text, situate the approach, assess its strengths and weaknesses and engage in a critical debate with the author and other members of the class. The texts are also here to help you in your own work.
The sessions are organized around the discussion of the text, and then the discussion of the work of students on a development project. Students will work in small groups to prepare a 20 min presentation on a given development project (see list below). The presentation has to be LIVELY and taken as a chance to improve English speaking skills in public. In addition to work sessions among students to prepare it, the group will have a MANDATORY preparation session with the teacher on zoom a week ahead of their presentation. This is meant to HELP, by discussing what you've already read and improve both content and form so that you arrive confident on the day of the presentation.
PRESENTATIONS WILL START ON SESSION 3 (from S3 to S11 = 9 teams)
Teams can pick a project in the list below:
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Urban planning in colonial Casablanca (S3)
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The Groundnut scheme in Tanganyika/Tanzania (S4)
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The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or another dam in Africa or the Middle East, for instance the Aswan Dam in Egypt) (S5)
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The fight against Ebola (S6)
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Cash transfers: shouldn't we give money directly to the poor? (S7)
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Peace radio stations in Ivory Coast/Burundi etc. (S8)
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The Great Green Wall initiative (Sahel) (S9)
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The LAPSSET Corridor Program (Kenya-Ethiopia) (or other ‘corridors of development’ projects) (S10)
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The East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP) (S11)
A second, individual grade will stem from a "Devoir sur Table" at the end of term.
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Objective: unpack A MULTI-LAYERED, THICK PROCESS
Warning: YOU OBVIOUSLY YOU WON’T HAVE TIME TO DO ALL THIS IN YOUR PRESENTATION. HOWEVER THIS IS THE KIND OF QUESTIONS YOU HAVE TO ASK YOURSELF BEFORE MAKING A CHOICE ON PARTICULAR ASPECTS YOU WOULD LIKE TO TACKLE IN YOUR WORK
- The social and intellectual origins of the “project”
- The ways in which an “issue”, a “threat” and a “crisis” have been identified, and at the basis of the definition of a “need” to intervene. “Crisis” are not natural and not all are addressed. This reflects power relations, and/or the evolution of societies. THEY DO NOT REFLECT AN OBJECTIVE INTENSITY OF THE PROBLEM.
- How are situations qualified?
- Were there mobilisations of particular categories of population to ATTRACT development/intervention? How did they mobilise?
- How was the “issue” measured and known? Statistics and numbers are not autonomous from politics. They reflect socio-political process AND are USED in narratives, especially success stories. Cf. Morten Jerven, Poor Numbers. How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It, (Cornell University Press, 2013) and Cf. Joel Glassman, Humanitarianism and the Quantification of the Human Needs (Routledge Humanitarian Press, 2019).
- Who and/or what is made RESPONSIBLE of the project? Why?
- How was the decision made?
- FOLLOW THE MONEY! Who are the funders?
- Who were/are the actors involved in the elaboration: private, public, international (private and public): what power relations between them? What are the SOCIAL CONDITIONS of these alliances/partnerships?
- Be particularly attentive to the power relations between internal and external actors: cf. mobilisation of the notion of “extroversion” by JF Bayart “think dependency without being dependentists”: ‘L'Afrique dans le monde : une histoire d'extraversion’, Critique internationale, 1999/4 n° 5, 1999. p.97-120.
- What were the initial plans (blueprints)?
- Unpack the “buzzwords” of development (Andrea Cornwall) or what Ferguson calls “devspeak” and “devthink”, “jargon”: denaturalize them, origins of terminology, transformations, appropriations. Cornwall, Andrea. “Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development Discourse.” Development in Practice, vol. 17, no. 4/5, 2007, pp. 471–84.
- To what extent are the projects path dependent? Or to what extent ruptures with what has been done before?
- The political context of the decision and possibly the changes (regime change? Decolonisation?)
- History of the State
- THE LOCAL POLITICS: WHERE (was the dam built?) + local history of the presence of the State (differs according to regions within a country)
- The setting up / implementation: by whom?
- Effects on local power configurations: political (formation of the State) and social (relations between social classes/groups/races/gender)
- Reception by “beneficiaries” or “recipients”: local interpretations/understandings, rejections, appropriations + WHO rejects? What do they do to reject?
IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION: even if you obviously can talk about it, try to take a step back from an assessment of the ‘success’ of the programme, at least not (only) on their own terms. THE COMMON “PROBLEMATIQUE” THAT YOU WILL ALL SHARE is : How does this particular project reflect and affect social hierarchies/power relations?
You can assess this at different levels: local, international, national. You have to go beyond the planners’ intentions
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