Undergraduate - UnitATS2378 - Development and the Third World

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2013 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Anthropology
Offered	Clayton First semester 2013 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Sara Niner

Synopsis

This unit takes an anthropological approach to critiquing international development and understanding the notion of the 'third world'. It explores how ethnography can improve our understanding of the development process, relationships between the 'north' and 'south' and the place of the 'third world' in contemporary globalisation. The unit examines the ways anthropologists theorise social and economic patterns of change; how development policy is imagined, produced, and received (or resisted) across multiple cultural contexts; and how development (and therefore the third world) is imagined and defined through specific case studies of approaches, institutions and practitioners in the field.

Outcomes

Students can expect to develop:

An understanding of global inequalities and how these impact on different groups of people;
A thorough grounding in theories and models explaining the historical context of global inequalities;
A comprehension of dominant discourses and trends in development;
An awareness of the culture of organisations, institutions and practitioners of development;
An understanding of how development has affected particular cultures and places;
The analytical skills to evaluate approaches to development from an anthropological perspective;
An awareness of problems and issues in utilising development strategies and theories;
An appreciation of the history, philosophy and practice of qualitative social research;
An understanding of a range of methods used in qualitative social research;
An awareness of some of the key issues, debates and controversies associated with conducting qualitative research, and an appreciation of the complexity of conducting such research;
An appreciation of the meaning and role of both ethics and reflexivity in qualitative social research; and
The ability to practically undertake some kinds of qualitative social research.