Aims

This course aims to make students aware of the general issue of development in the so-called "Third World", and to show how under-development and mal-development are not inevitable, but result from particular historic forms of conditioning.

Main themes

The course will employ the structuralist method in the broadest sense, and will eschew all dogmatism. Some "under-developed" societies will first be examined as systems made up of techno-economic, social and political structures that have been integrated by cultures fundamentally different from western culture.
Historical contacts with industrialised countries have unleashed a process of destructuring followed by a re-organisation (that is still far from completion) based on a very different aim. Third World societies are therefore "in transition", and present as "dualist" entities that include a traditional sector now breaking up and a modern sector in gestation, the latter group being integrated into a dominant foreign economy.
The approach will involve analysing the process of destructuring under several headings (demographic, religious, social and economic), and then studying the asymmetrical relationships that emerge internally between traditional and modern sectors, and externally between dominant states and their satellite economies.

Content and teaching methods

The course will consists of two complementary sections:
- a general section that will seek to present an overview of developing countries after decolonisation (independence, non-alignment, a wide range of development strategies, and regional organisations);
- a thematic section that will study particular cases that will vary from year to year (mainly issues of technological development, natural resources, demographic growth and the labour market, international investment and the international trade debt, and migrations).
Methodology
A professorial course in the first section, and a participative course, including contributions from students, in the second section.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment: This will focus both on summaries of the various phases of the course, and on students' active participation during the course.

Programmes in which this activity is taught

Other credits in programs