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 fields of international development, wealth creation, and global welfare, from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. The course 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 the now interdisciplinary field that has emerged. The multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary 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 interdisciplinary manner.