Global inequality and alternatives to development

In this  unit, you will take an anthropological approach to critiquing international aid and development and the global structures it is embedded within. You will explore various theories of globalisation and the production of global inequalities. You will employ ethnographic research and methods to improve understanding of development processes, and the notions of human progress it rests upon. Through specific critical case studies of approaches, institutions, programs and practitioners across multiple cultural contexts, you will investigate how development policy is imagined, produced, received or resisted and how those being developed, the so-called ‘beneficiaries’, are imagined, defined and assisted. In response to these critiques you will explore new and recommended alternative approaches to international development such as feminist theories, participatory and post-development, decolonisation and localisation.