Outline

Overview

The 21st century world is far from the postwar vision of modernisation under the aegis of a liberal international order. What does development mean in a world that has never been more divided and unequal? When people, money, microbes, and coastlines move - and borders are drawn and redrawn - what do powerful, wealthy societies owe the global majority? Can guest workers, squatters, and First Nations do what green revolutions couldn't? This class examines how the focus of development has shifted from growth to health, and expanded to include women and other marginalised groups, and in so doing also set in motion new kinds of politics and new ideas of progress.

Unit details and rules

Academic unit	Anthropology
Credit points	6
Prerequisites ?	None
Corequisites ?	None
Prohibitions ?	SSCP6900
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	Yes

Teaching staff

Coordinator	Ryan Schram, ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

Assessment

The census date for this unit availability is 31 August 2026

Details
Criteria

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length	Use of AI
Written work	Take-home essay-response assignment Essay responses to set questions based on key ideas from unit readings	30%	Week 07 Due date: 13 Sep 2026 at 23:59 Closing date: 20 Sep 2026	1500 words	AI allowed
Outcomes assessed:
Q&A following presentation, submission or placement	Interactive research presentation Respond to questions about one's research essay	15%	Week 13 Due date: 02 Nov 2026 at 15:00 Closing date: 09 Nov 2026	10 minutes	AI prohibited
Outcomes assessed:
Written work	Research essay Argue for a claim about a topic of one's choice	40%	Week 13 Due date: 01 Nov 2026 at 23:59 Closing date: 08 Nov 2026	2500 words	AI allowed
Outcomes assessed:
Portfolio or journal	Weekly writing assignments Respond to open questions to prepare for tutorial discussion	15%	Weekly	10 x 150 words	AI allowed
Outcomes assessed:

Assessment summary

Detailed information for each assessment can be found on Canvas.

Assessment criteria

The University awards common result grades, set out in the Coursework Policy (Schedule 1).

As a general guide, a High distinction indicates work of an exceptional standard, a Distinction a very high standard, a Credit a good standard, and a Pass an acceptable standard.

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100
Distinction	75 - 84
Credit	65 - 74
Pass	50 - 64
Fail	0 - 49	When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

For more information see guide to grades.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)

You can use generative AI tools for open assessments. Restrictions on AI use apply to secure, supervised assessments used to confirm if students have met specific learning outcomes.

Refer to the assessment table above to see if AI is allowed, for assessments in this unit and check Canvas for full instructions on assessment tasks and AI use.

If you use AI, you must always acknowledge it. Misusing AI may lead to a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy.

Visit the Current Students website for more information on AI in assessments, including details on how to acknowledge its use.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

This unit has an exception to the standard University policy or supplementary information has been provided by the unit coordinator. This information is displayed below:

Late penalties are per University policy and discretion can be applied especially if students are in regular, early contact with the coordinator about their progress.

Academic integrity

The University expects students to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

Our website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. This includes advice on how to avoid common breaches of academic integrity. Ensure that you have completed the Academic Honesty Education Module (AHEM) which is mandatory for all commencing coursework students

Penalties for serious breaches can significantly impact your studies and your career after graduation. It is important that you speak with your unit coordinator if you need help with completing assessments.

Visit the Current Students website for more information on AI in assessments, including details on how to acknowledge its use.

Learning support

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Support for students

The Support for Students Policy reflects the University’s commitment to supporting students in their academic journey and making the University safe for students. It is important that you read and understand this policy so that you are familiar with the range of support services available to you and understand how to engage with them.

The University uses email as its primary source of communication with students who need support under the Support for Students Policy. Make sure you check your University email regularly and respond to any communications received from the University.

Learning resources and detailed information about weekly assessment and learning activities can be accessed via Canvas. It is essential that you visit your unit of study Canvas site to ensure you are up to date with all of your tasks.

If you are having difficulties completing your studies, or are feeling unsure about your progress, we are here to help. You can access the support services offered by the University at any time:

Support and Services (including health and wellbeing services, financial support and learning support)
Course planning and administration
Meet with an Academic Adviser

Weekly schedule

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	What happened to development?: A snapshot of the state of the world in 2026 / Rist (2007) / Rist (2014), chap. 1-2	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 01	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 02	The white man’s burden / Lorenzini (2019); Pedersen (2015); Lugard (1922) / Rist (2014), chap. 3	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 02	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 03	Making the Third World: Truman’s Point Four, Third Worldism, and the New International Economic Order / Getachew (2019), chaps. 3, 5; “Text of the Final Communiqué of Asian-African Conference” (1955); United Nations General Assembly (1974) / Rist (2014), chap. 4-6; Illich ([1970] 1973)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 03	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 04	Villagization and African socialism: State power and utopian imagination / Scott (1998), intro. and chap. 7; Lal (2015), chap. 4 / Rist (2014), chap. 8	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 04	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 05	Whither development?: The crossroads at the end of history / Escobar ([1995] 2012), intro. and chap. 3; Sen (1999), intro. and chap. 4 / Rist (2014), chap. 11	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 05	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 06	The roads not taken: Alternatives to development / Martinez-Alier (2014); McMichael (2014) / Freire ([1970] 2005)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 06	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 07	Human resources: Empowering informality and the transformation of the development subject / Elyachar (2005), intro. and chaps. 3-5	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 07	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 08	A war on poverty / Ansell (2014), intro. and chaps. 4-5	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 08	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 09	Model citizens in a developmentalist socialist state / High (2021), intro. and chaps. 3-4	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 09	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 10	Development as anti-urbanism / Ng’weno (2025), intro. and chap. 8; Mamdani (1996), chap. 7 / Rooney (2021)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 10	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 11	Undoing development / Rivero (2019), intro. and chap. 6	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 11	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 12	Reparations as a new global politics of inequality / Beckles (2025); Beckles, Chitre, and Richardson (2026); Bell and Biholar (2026) / Morena, Krause, and Stevis (2019); Táíwò (2025)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 12	As per lecture	Tutorial (1 hr)
Week 13	Student presentations	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 13	Student presentations	Tutorial (1 hr)

Attendance and class requirements

Attendance: According to Faculty Board Resolutions, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are expected to attend 90% of their classes. If you attend less than 50% of classes, regardless of the reasons, you may be referred to the Examiner’s Board. The Examiner’s Board will decide whether you should pass or fail the unit of study if your attendance falls below this threshold.
Lecture recording: Most lectures (in recording-equipped venues) will be recorded and may be made available to students on the LMS. However, you should not rely on lecture recording to substitute your classroom learning experience.
Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

All required and recommended readings are available via the Leganto interface ("Reading list") on the class Canvas site.

Ansell, Aaron. 2014. Zero Hunger: Political Culture and Antipoverty Policy in Northeast Brazil. Durham, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

Beckles, Hilary. 2025. “The Struggle for Reparations in the Caribbean.” In The Black Atlantic’s Triple Burden, edited by Adekeye Adebajo, 383–93. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Beckles, Hilary, Smit Chitre, and Eugene T Richardson. 2026. “Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and the Potential Impact on Human Well-Being.” BMJ Global Health 11 (Suppl 1): e017217. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2024-017217.

Bell, Karen, and Ramona Biholar. 2026. “The Role of Reparations for a Decolonized Just Transition: Perspectives from the Anglophone Caribbean.” Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 22 (1): 2681709. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2026.2681709.

Elyachar, Julia. 2005. Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Politics, History, and Culture. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Escobar, Arturo. (1995) 2012. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb31025.0001.001.

Freire, Paulo. (1970) 2005. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. 30th anniversary edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Getachew, Adom. 2019. Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

High, Holly. 2021. Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.

Illich, Ivan D. (1970) 1973. “Planned Poverty: The End Result of Technical Assistance.” In Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution, 129–43. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Education.

Lal, Priya. 2015. African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lorenzini, Sara. 2019. “Development as an Ideology for Empire.” In Global Development: A Cold War History, 9–21. Princeton University Press. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691185569-003/html?lang=en.

Lugard, F. D. 1922. The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. Edinburgh, London: W. Blackwood and Sons. http://archive.org/details/cu31924028741175.

Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Martinez-Alier, Joan. 2014. “Between Activism and Science: Grassroots Concepts for Sustainability Coined by Environmental Justice Organizations.” Journal of Political Ecology 21: 19–60. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1259/e240225ad5367058eb06071efb4bbeb7f1f9.pdf.

McMichael, Philip. 2014. “Historicizing Food Sovereignty.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 933–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876999.

Morena, Edouard, Dunja Krause, and Dimitris Stevis. 2019. Just Transitions: Social Justice in the Shift Towards a Low-Carbon World. London: Pluto Books.

Ng’weno, Bettina. 2025. No Place Like Home in the New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi. Oakland: University of California Press.

Pedersen, Susan. 2015. “Of Covenants and Carve-Ups.” In The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570485.003.0002.

Rist, Gilbert. 2007. “Development as a Buzzword.” Development in Practice 17 (4–5): 485–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701469328.

———. 2014. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. Translated by Patrick Camiller. 4th ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=5915284.

Rivero, Oswaldo de. 2019. The Myth of Development: Non-Viable Economies and the Crisis of Civilization. London: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=5915282.

Rooney, Michelle Nayahamui. 2021. ““We Want Development”: Land and Water (Dis)connections in Port Moresby, Urban Papua New Guinea.” The Contemporary Pacific 33 (1): 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1353/cp.2021.0001.

Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press.

Táíwò, Olúfẹmi O. 2025. Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

“Text of the Final Communiqué of Asian-African Conference.” 1955. In Selected Documents of the Bandung Conference: Texts of Selected Speeches and Final Communique of the Asian-African Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, April 18-24, 1955, 29–35. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations. http://archive.org/details/selecteddocument00asia.

United Nations General Assembly. 1974. “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order.” Resolutions of the 6th special session, Resolution no. 3201. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/218450.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

Outcomes
Graduate qualities

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

LO1. Understand the roots of the contemporary global politics of development in the ideologies and institutions of European colonialism as an international system, Cold War power struggles, and ethnocentric concepts of modernity and change.
LO2. Identify the contested and contradictory aspects of modernity, progress, and change in contemporary forms of development policy and practice.
LO3. Explain experiences with and practices of development intervention in terms of unanticipated outcomes and unintended byproducts of its techniques, knowledge, and assumptions.
LO4. Formulate a position and develop an argument for reading contemporary cases of development policy and practice in terms of the history of political struggles over the nature and expression of state power, the role of scientific and technical expertise, and the distribution of cultural and symbolic authority.

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes	Graduate qualities
Learning outcomes

Responding to student feedback

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

This unit has been redesigned to address new topics as part of the Master of Social Justice program.

Disclaimer

Important: the University of Sydney regularly reviews units of study and reserves the right to change the units of study available annually. To stay up to date on available study options, including unit of study details and availability, refer to the relevant handbook.

To help you understand common terms that we use at the University, we offer an online glossary.

Current students

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Support for students

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

DVST6901: The Global Politics of Development

Semester 2, 2026 [Normal day] - Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Support for students

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links