ADS733 - Theories and Critiques of Development

Unit details

Year:

2024 unit information

Enrolment modes:Trimester 1: Online
Credit point(s):1
EFTSL value:0.125
Unit Chair:Trimester 1: Yamini Narayanan
Cohort rule:Nil
Prerequisite:

Nil

Corequisite:Nil
Typical study commitment:

Students will on average spend 150-hours over the teaching period undertaking the teaching, learning and assessment activities for this unit.

This will include educator guided online learning activities within the unit site.

Educator-facilitated (scheduled) learning activities - online unit enrolment:

Online independent and collaborative learning activities equivalent to 1 x 1-hour per week

Content

In this unit, we think critically about anthropocentrism or the notion of human exceptionalism/supremacism as a core analytic in critical development studies and praxis. How does anthropocentrism shape anthropocentric-capitalist ideas of ‘human development’, and with what stakes for a large spectrum of marginalised human and nonhuman others who fall outside the rubric of the ‘ideal human’? The unit shines a focus on multiple lifeworlds at the margins or shadows of mainstream development. To this end, it brings together critical animal, disability, race and poverty studies, and explores how progress, flourishing and liberatory politics may be imagined through the forging and rupturing of these diverse lifeworlds, via anti-anthropocentric modalities of development.

ULO These are the Learning Outcomes (ULO) for this unit. At the completion of this unit, successful students can: Deakin Graduate Learning Outcomes
ULO1

Critically analyse anthropocentrism and anti-anthropocentrism across the categories of animality, race and disability

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO4: Critical thinking

GLO8: Global citizenship

ULO2

Integrate anthropocentrism into the analyses of 'human development', and explore the stakes across the stated categories

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO4: Critical thinking

GLO5: Problem solving

GLO8: Global citizenship

ULO3

Empirically draw on mundane/normative and iconic examples of anthropocentrism in current development and ecological issues

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO4: Critical thinking

GLO5: Problem solving

GLO8: Global citizenship

ULO4

Critically conceptualise action or policy around ideas of flourishing and liberation drawing on alternative modalities of development

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO4: Critical thinking

GLO5: Problem solving 

GLO8: Global citizenship

Assessment

Assessment Description Student output Grading and weighting
(% total mark for unit)
Indicative due week
Assessment 1: Essay 2000 words
or equivalent
40% Information not yet available
Assessment 2: Essay 3000 words
or equivalent
60% Information not yet available

The assessment due weeks provided may change. The Unit Chair will clarify the exact assessment requirements, including the due date, at the start of the teaching period.

Learning Resource

The texts and reading list for the unit can be found on the University Library via ADS733
Note: Select the relevant trimester reading list. Please note that a future teaching period's reading list may not be available until a month prior to the start of that teaching period so you may wish to use the relevant trimester's prior year reading list as a guide only.

Unit Fee Information

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