International Development: Global Trends via Local Case Perspectives

COURSE CONTENT

The traditional North-South divide in international development is losing relevance as global challenges such as resource scarcity, newly emerged inequalities, food security threats, global warming, migration issues, and armed conflicts now affect both developed and developing regions.

Furthermore, globalization has given rise to complex societal issues that require collaboration among diverse actors, leading to multi-stakeholder cooperation. However, this approach assumes that assembling the right stakeholders will automatically yield solutions, neglecting power imbalances and diverse interests that can lead to exclusion or domination of less powerful actors. Despite increasing collaboration, many development actors still view social change as a linear, controllable process. Organisations are now assessed based on their performance and value for money rather than good intentions. However, the intricate and unpredictable nature of development challenges calls for new and innovative ways to understand, manage, and evaluate development processes and outcomes.

We will zoom in on cross-cutting phenomenon like migration, conflicts, digitalization and newly emerging inequalities as key challenges that shapes current state and present the situation through local cases of Kenya, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Ukraine, Indonesia, etc.

The Centre for International Cooperation at VU Amsterdam emphasizes an integrated, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approach to global challenges, collaborating closely with VU faculties and international partners since 1955. It draws on the expertise of various experts engaged in coordinating and executing capacity-building, education, research, and outreach programs with partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the course:

• Participants understand the complexities and key trends and debates that have historically shaped the sector of international development cooperation;
• Participants can recognize and critically reflect upon the concept of development and debate their position in international and global development practices;  
• Participants are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the SDGs;
• Participants can identify different forms of power and describe how power relates to inequality and shapes processes of exclusion and inclusion;
• Participants understand the importance and can apply insights of local perspectives in thinking about international development;
• Participants can understand how to select and critically review the literature, extract key messages of different learning material (lecturers, literature), and share their insights via a blog with their peers.

Furthermore, participants will learn and sharpen their skills regarding:  

- Writing blogs;
- Debating;
- Public speaking;
- Teamwork;
- Literature review / contextualizing.

TEACHING METHODS

Onsite interactive lectures on campus in class, with guest lecturers, group work based on videos, real-life experience sharing, excursion, and case study discussions.

TYPE OF ASSESSMENT

Group assessment, Blog assignment in pairs (depending on the amount of participants), Debate.