Week 1: Introduction

Session 1. (Week 1, September 4, 7:30pm. NOTE DIFFERENT TIME--ARRANGED BY REGISTRAR). Informational Meeting and Introduction to the Problems Addressed by the Course. (1) Introduction to the Course. (a) The Obstacles: Colonial Injustice and Its Legacies, Global Racial Domination and Its Legacies, Global Oppression of Women and Its Legacies, Global Poverty Produced by Unjust World Economic Institutions. (b) Solutions? Human Rights and Development as Freedom. (2) Economic and Social Development Aid and the Quest for World Governance. (3) The Emergent Practice of Human Rights. (4) Colonial Injustice: Types of Colonies, Types of Colonial Empires, Periods of Colonialism, History of Conquest and Resistance.

No required readings. In this session, we begin by discussing the goals of the course and the main themes and problems the course will treat. We'll then hold a brief discussion of the history of the development project from 1949 onwards, and of the human rights project from the beginning of the 20th century. These will be based on the chapters by Mark Mazower and Charles Beitz below, which you can read or not as you like. The last hour of the class will be a part-lecture part-discussion on the theory and history of European colonialism presented in Jurgen Osterhammel's Colonialism. We'll need this in order to make sense of the legacies of colonial injustice, which will be the theme of the next two weeks. You do NOT need to read any of this ahead of time.

Optional reading 1: Mark Mazower, "Development as World-Making," Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (Penguin Books, 2012): 273-305. [Available on Moodle.]

Optional reading 2: Charles R. Beitz, "The Practice," The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2009), pp. 13-44 ONLY [Available on Moodle.]

Discussion of the themes in: Jurgen Osterhammel, "Colonies: A Classification," “ 'Colonialism' and 'Colonial Empires',” "Epochs of Colonialism," "Conquest and Resistance," "The Colonial State," "Colonial Economic Forms," "Colonial Societies," "Colonialism and Indigenous Culture," "Decolonization," Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Markus Wiener, 1997), pp. 10-12, 15-22, 25-38, 41-47, 51-68, 71-79, 83-91, 95-104, 115-119

So you'd like to know more…

Thomas McCarthy, "From modernism to messianism: Reflections on the state of 'development'," Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge UP, 2009): 192-229.

Immanuel Wallerstein, "Historical Origins of World-Systems Analysis: From Social Science Disciplines to Historical Social Sciences," World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Duke UP, 2004), pp. 4-11

Albert O. Hirschman, "The Rise and Decline of Development Economics," Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (Cambridge UP, 1981), pp. 1-24

Dani Rodrik, "Fifty Years of Growth (and Lack Thereof): An Interpretation," One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (Princeton UP, 2007): 13-56

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W. W. Norton, 1999)

Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (Vintage, 2005)

Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America (Harper & Row, 1984)

Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (WW Norton, 1975)

John Charles Chasteen, "Encounter," "Colonial Crucible," "Independence," Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America (WW Norton, 2001): 29-118

Alan Taylor, Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2011)

Dennis Naumann, Colonial Africa: 1884 to 1994 (Oxford UP, 2012)