| Call Number | 18364 |
|---|---|
| Day & Time Location |
T 4:10pm-6:00pm 409 International Affairs Building |
| Points | 3 |
| Grading Mode | Standard |
| Approvals Required | None |
| Instructor | Timothy Mitchell |
| Type | SEMINAR |
| Method of Instruction | In-Person |
| Course Description | Development is a field of expertise that has often been vulnerable to political challenge and intellectual uncertainty. Forms of technical and economic knowledge that claim to master the present and provide a path to the future repeatedly turn out to be speculative, misguided, or damaging. Today, however, the situation seems more serious. The planetary problems of human-induced climate change, depletion of fossil energy reserves, and instability of financial systems have placed in question many of the foundations on which modern development knowledge was based. in the past, the practice of development was thought by some to constitute a kind of anti-politics. By transforming struggles over resources and livelihoods into technical questions to be solved by the expertise of outsiders, it was argued, development narrowed the possibilities for democratic contestation. Do the new uncertainties open up new kinds of political possibility? Can conflicts over the techniques and ends of development create new arenas and methods for democratic engagement? To answer this question requires new ways of thinking about technology and democracy. The modern theory and practice of democracy developed, from around the 1930s, with a particular view of technology and expertise, and with a particular view of nature as the object of technological transformation. Although technological transformations made possible the emergence of modern mass politics, theories of democracy tend to treat technology as merely as an object of policy-making. However, socio-technical change introduces not just new objects of policy. It alters the boundaries and nature of collective life, generating new forces, agents, and possible futures. The task is to recognize and attempt to describe these sites of uncertainty and contestation. this course begins by considering alternative ways to think about technology and politics, then explores a series of cases of technological uncertainty to examine their potential for generating new ways of thinking about and practicing democracy. A particular focus of this year's course will be financial technologies and the politics of debt. In the context of a continuing global financial disorder, we will look back at the history of development as, among other things, the evolution of mechanisms for the creation of debt and the government of populations through credit arrangements. The politics of debt is often related, today, to the wider processes of "financialization." We will address it differently, by relating debt to the h |
| Web Site | Vergil |
| Department | International and Public Affairs |
| Enrollment | 11 students (18 max) as of 10:06AM Monday, May 13, 2024 |
| Subject | International Affairs |
| Number | U6205 |
| Section | 001 |
| Division | School of International and Public Affairs |
| Open To | Architecture, Schools of the Arts, Business, Engineering:Graduate, GSAS, SIPA, Journalism, Law, Public Health, Professional Studies, Social Work |
| Campus | Morningside |
| Section key | 20241INAF6205U001 |