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Module details for 2022/23.

30 credits

FHEQ Level 6

Module Outline

This module creates a space for students to study global systems of violence and rethink development away from a ‘will to improvement’ within ready-made frameworks. The module uses decolonial, Indigenous studies, feminist, critical political economy and racial capitalist perspectives, along with activist research approaches, as students encounter global systems of violence through community-based learning and investigate manifestations of these systems in Brighton in collaboration with local activists. Local sites will vary each year and include; arms factories, war museums, movements working on abolition and the decolonization of development, and climate change. Students will explore global systems of violence that entangle problems of development in places ranging from Palestine to Yemen and across global issues of war, policing, and community development. As we explore the case studies, students will be encouraged to reflect on what they intuitively associate with ‘development,’ what they resist and why this might be the case, as we grapple with how to rethink development in relation to systemic violence. Through these encounters, the module will problematize the Global South as a location of violence and encourage students to rethink the relationship between the local and the global.


Weekly topic schedule
Part One: Groundings
1. Rethinking development: between the bureaucratic and the political
2. Reform versus radical transformation
3. “Development beyond improvement”: solidarity, unsettling hegemony

Part Two: Encounters
4. Humanitarianism/war/Yemen/Palestine
5. Site visit: EDO factory and/or Cowley Club

6. Colonialism/reparations/WWI
7. Site visit: Royal Pavilion

8. Abolition/policing/alternative development
9. Site/speaker visit: Movement for Black Lives Brighton

Part Three: Reflections
10. Project surgery
11. Project surgery

Module learning outcomes

Theoretically explore the relationship between the local and the global

Examine how a local site is implicated in global systems of violence

Reflect on the module theme of ‘development beyond improvement’

Demonstrate an understanding of and ability to apply theories, concepts and debates about development and global systems of violence

Demonstrate an understanding of praxis in relation to an empirical site

Reflect on the significance of global systems of violence for practice and policy of international development

Timing

Submission deadlines may vary for different types of assignment/groups of students.

Weighting

Coursework components (if listed) total 100% of the overall coursework weighting value.

How to read the week pattern

The numbers indicate the weeks of the term and how many events take place each week.