Topic outline

  • General

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    Politics of Development

     

    Master 1

    2024-2025

    S2

     

    Thursdays 10 am – 1 pm

    D634 Sorbonne 

    Teacher: Florence Brisset-Foucault

    Florence.brisset-foucault@univ-paris1.fr


    (Image credit: Bodys Isek Kingelez, La Ville fantôme) 

    This course aims at familiarising students with critical approaches to development. Articulating the sociology of public action and the history and anthropology of development, it does not seek to assess development plans’ efficiency or to provide ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’. It aims, instead, at reaching a better understanding of the ways in which the definition of both problems and solutions 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 by their ‘beneficiairies’. 

    The course is organized in 8 sessions of 3 hours each. The work is based on readings, their critique, and the analysis of case studies. CAREFUL !!! THERE IS NO CLASS ON THE 6TH FEBRUARY AND ON THE 3RD OF APRIL

    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. The level of involvement in the discussions will be part of the evaluation (20% of the mark). We are all here to learn together.   

    Students have to carefully and critically read one text per week, starting week 2 (13th Feb). Each week, you will prepare a one or two pages max essay on the text (please bring it in print, or bring a manuscript). I will collect randomly some of them (30% of the mark). 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, on which they will reflect all along the semester. Students will work in pairs or trios (depending on the number of people attending the class). Each team will send a 5-pages essay on the project of their choosing no later than the 13th April (50% of the mark). The methodology of the note will be explained during class. 

     

    Teams can pick a project in the list below: 

     

      1. The Addis Abeba Master Plan: Lisa, Eve
      2. Suez Canal: Yannis, Ayten, Rand and Rihem 
      3. The Groundnut scheme in Tanganyika/Tanzania: Esther, Alejandra, Mariana
      4. Biometrics and elections in Chad: Ezel, Gia, Giacommo
      5. The Lake Turkana wind farm (Kenya): Anicet, Marion, Anouk M, Colombe
      6. The Great Green Wall initiative (Sahel): Aïtana, Maysane
      7. The LAPSSET Corridor Program (Kenya-Ethiopia):??
      8. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP): Elzear, Sasha
      9. ID4D: Alexandre, Marie Lebardon
      10. Biometric money: the e-Zwich in Ghana: Leopold
      11. The fight against sleeping sickness in Cameroun (or elsewhere): Emma, Ikram, Hornella, Jeanne
      12. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or another dam in Africa or the Middle East, for instance the Aswan Dam in Egypt): Manuela, Justine, Ronan
      13. The imagination of the Sahel: Luis Cervantes, Camille Mazeaud, Leo Perez, Anouk F
      14. Urban planning in colonial Casablanca: Lou, Louis, Solène
      15. The malaria vaccine: Luce, Swann, Mia and Raphael
      16. The Mwanamugimu nutrition rehabilitation program (Uganda) Alois and Slomé, Lucie Cebron and Lucie Cassoda
      17. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) initiative (on HIV/Aids): Romane, Manon P, Marie S
      18. Vision City, Kigali (Rwanda): Sasha and Elzear
      19. Plumpy’Nut and the fight against acute malnutrition: Louis, Oscar, Mbasha


  • Session 1 - 30 January - Introduction and guest lecture Professor Nadine Machikou

    - Course introduction, organisation of the work, presentation of the syllabus

    - The politics of development knowledge, the colonial library and the invention of Africa through development

    - Lecture by Professor Nadine Machikou, Dschang University, Cameroon and guest professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne: 'Politics of compassionate relationality'

    Professor Machikou is a tenure professor in political science. Co-Editor in chief of Politique Africaine and member of the editing committee of the Global Africa, she is also Director of seminars at the International War College of Cameroon and Director of the Center for Study and Research in International and Community Law (University of Yaoundé II) and President of the 2019 and 2021 agrégation jury of the "Political Section" at the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES). She is also Vice-President of the African Association of Political Science since March 2021.

    Her work focuses on the practical and symbolic expressions of violence, the political and moral economy of emotions (compassion for Africa, anger in the context of the Anglophone crisis or the Islamist sect Boko Haram, etc.), public policy and community integration in Africa. 


  • Session 2 - 13 February - The Politics of the Anti-Politics Machine

    MANDATORY READING: James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine. « Development », Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, University Minnesota Press, 1994, chapter 9. 


  • Session 3 - 20th February - 'Development' and 'Under-Development': socio-political history of two ideas

    MANDATORY READING: Fred Cooper, “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans and the Development Concept”, in F. Cooper and R. Packard, Development and the Social Sciences. Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, University of California Press, 1997, p. 62-92.



  • Session 4 - 6th March - Development Aid and Political order

    MANDATORY READING: Thandika Mkandawire, “Aid, Accountability, and Democracy in Africa.” Social Research 77, no. 4 (2010): 1149–82. 

    - How to solve under-development: a history of aid and reform as solutions

    - The Washington Consensus and structural adjustment plans

    - Conditionalities and the Good Governance agenda

    - Effects on African societies and States: the end of the "postcolonial compromise"

    ACTIVITY: debate on the cut of USAID


  • Session 5 - 13th March - Thinking dependency without being dependentists

    MANDATORY READING: Graham Harrison, « Post-conditionality politics and administrative reform: Reflections on the cases of Uganda and Tanzania », Development and Change, 32 (4), 2001, p. 657-679.

    - Projection and debate on the film: 'Our Friends at the Bank', by Peter Chappell, 1998. 

    - Methodology and critical essays discussion: thinking dependency without being dependentists...


  • Session 6 - 20th March - A Sociology of aid workers and 'beneficiairies'

    MANDATORY READING: Duffield Mark, « Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society », Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2010, vol. 4, no 4, p. 453‑74.

    - Sociology of humanitarianism: profiles, vocations (Siméant, Dauvin)

    - Race and Gender in development land

    - Africanisation of development and humanitarian aid (Englund)

    - The political economy of humanitarian and development work:how is the money used? 

    - Methodology and critical essays discussions: who does what? (and why?)

  • Session 7 - 27th March - Socio-political effects and after-effects of aid projects

    MANDATORY READING: Rama Salla Dieng, ‘Adversely Incorporated yet Moving up the Social Ladder?’: Labour Migrants Shifting the Gaze from Agricultural Investment Chains to ‘Care Chains’ in Capitalist Social Reproduction in Senegal. Africa Development. 47, 3 (Nov. 2022), 133–166. 

    - Development brokers and local power configurations (Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan)

    - Who is to blame for poverty? The example of Bufunjo

    - Can we call on the State?  The example of Bufunjo

    - Desires of State

    - Gender and transformations

    - Developing the land: land reforms in rural and urban areas




  • Session 8 - 10th April - Appropriations of aid projects

    MANDATORY READING:  Ruth Prince Ruth, 'Tarmacking' in the Millenium city: spatial and temporal trajectories of empowerment and development in Kisumu, Kenya. Africa, 83 (4), 2013, pp. 582-605.

    - Development projects as indicative of localized (but connected) systems of thought

    - "Declarations of dependence" (Ferguson): paying attention to unexpected demands (Cherz, Englund)

    - Methodology and discussion on critical essays

  • Methodology for the essay

    The “pathway” for the critical essay

    Objective: unpack A MULTI-LAYERED, THICK PROCESS

     

    Attention: YOU OBVIOUSLY YOU WON’T HAVE TIME TO DO ALL THIS IN YOUR ESSAYS. 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: THIS IS NOT WHAT I’M ASKING. WHAT I’M ASKING (THE COMMON “PROBLEMATIQUE” THAT YOU WILL ALL SHARE) : How does this particular project reflect and affect social hierarchies/power relations? 

     

    You can assess this at different levels: local, international, national. Go beyond the planners’ intentions


  • General Bibliography

    Cheeseman Nic, Claire McLoughlin, Sameen Ali, Kailing Xie, David Hudson, The Politics of Development, London, Sage, 2024. 

    Rist Gilbert, Le développement Histoire d’une croyance occidentale, 2007 (3e éd.), Paris, Presses de Sciences Po.

    Rodney Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 

    Abrahamsen Rita, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourses and Good Governance in Africa, London, Zed Books, 2000.

    Elyachar, Julia, "Finance internationale, micro-crédit et religion de la société civile en Egypte", Critique internationale, 13, 2001, p. 139-152.

    Cooper Frederick, « Modernité » in Le Colonialisme en question. Théorie, connaissance, histoire, Paris, Payot, 2010, p.153-202