DWA 221 International Development

Against the backdrop of 840 million persons worldwide suffering from malnourishment and nearly 1.3 billion people living on less than a dollar per day this course surveys the field of international development wealth creation and global welfare from an historical global and comparative perspective. It will introduce students to the field's academic contours building from the historic role of economics in pioneering and undergirding the field to a broad understanding of now inter-disciplinary field that has emerged. The multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspective of this introductory survey course is in keeping with an emerging global consensus that measures of poverty go beyond income and consumption and that poverty reduction requires bridging disciplines (economics political science history anthropology geography) and methods (quantitative and qualitative observational and participatory). The course will be divided into two parts. During the first part of the course students will be introduced to the main theoretical ideas on social economic and political development that have informed the field's evolution. This will familiarize students with fundamental thinking on development as well as the frontiers of research. The second part of the course will explore some of the current debates about development. Students will analyze such debates in a rigorously multi-dimensional and inter-disciplinary manner.