Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 Graduate Catalog 
    
2018-2019 Graduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

TCCS 714 - Colonialism, Human Development, Modernization


3 Credit(s)

Description:
This course traces, examines and debates the genealogy of two critical ideas/concepts in the history of knowledge: human development and modernization. Their common denominator is Colonialism. The idea of human development can be traced to European though (the Enlightenment’s idea of progress), whilst development theory has been primarily associated with theories growing out of the post WWII decolonization of period and centered on the perceived economic development “gaps” of the newly emerging nations. In the Social Sciences, development theories “explain” disparities among and within nations. Development theories have also been at the center of economic, sociological and cultural theories of modernization. The idea of modernization, of urban development and urbanization theory are also linked by a common thread: a vision of a “universal” single-continuous-social-economic-cultural-path for all societies, at least since the Columbian Event of 1492. Development and Modernization have been the focus of perhaps almost all academic disciplines, to note, Geography, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, History, Literature, Art, and so on. The academic/disciplinary trajectory of development and modernization theories therefore, is a case study of the obfuscation produced by the very condition of disciplinary knowledge.

038600:1