Dr Camilla Royle

This course is available on the BA in Geography, BSc in Economic History and Geography, BSc in Environment and Development, BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics and BSc in Geography with Economics. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

This course offers a critical analysis of the politics of contemporary development processes and the geopolitical interests that influence them. The course considers development as both practical pursuit and as a series of discourses and representations. The course examines topics including Critical Approaches to Development; Histories of Development and Geopolitics (Cold War through Neoliberal Contexts); 9/11 and the Security-Development Nexus; Informality; Resource Extraction; Illicit Trade; Violence; and New Geopolitical Landscapes (China and South-South Ties).  The course will examine these themes with special attention to African contexts.

In the Department of Geography and Environment, teaching will be delivered through a combination of classes/seminars, pre-recorded lectures, live online lectures, in-person lectures and other supplementary interactive live activities.

This course is delivered through a combination of classes and lectures across Lent Term.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Lent Term.

Students will be expected to produce one formative essay plan in the Lent Term.

A comprehensive reading list will be provided during the course.  Recommended readings include:

• Chant, S.; McIlawine, C., 2009. Geographies of Development in the 21st Century. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
• Feldman, S.; Geisler, C.; and Menon, G., 2011. Accumulating Insecurity: Violence and Dispossession in the Making of Everyday Life.  Georgia: University of Georgia press.
• Gregory, D., 2004. The colonial present: Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Kapoor, I., 2008. The postcolonial politics of development. London: Routledge
• Mercille, J., 2011. Violent narco-cartels or US hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico. Third World Quarterly 32(9), pp.1637-1653.
• Onslow, S., 2009. Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation. Oxon: Routledge.
• Power, M., 2018. Geopolitics and development. London: Routledge;
• Said, E., 2003. Orientalism. UK: Penguin.
• Watts, Michael.  2006.  “Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa.”  Monthly Review 58(4): 1-17.
• Wright, M., 2011. Necropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36(3), pp. 707-731.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.

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