Fall

Utfyllende informasjon

Objectives
The course seeks to give students insights into
(i) various perspectives on planning processes, with special emphasis on the relationship between development policy-making and culture; and
(ii) dilemmas and challenges of cultural dimension of planning.
This English-taught elective is open to all students interested in the outlined issues; the international students in Peace Studies, Visual Cultural Studies, International Fisheries Management, Indigenous Studies, etc.
Contents
What does culture add to the tools of planning? How does rational planning processes interrelate with situated meanings, values and local cultural processes? Traditionally, planning involves making decisions about alternative ways of realising certain predetermined goals. Its basic tool is scientific knowledge, which standardises reality. Diverse cultures are seen as a hindrance to efficient policy analysis, yet neither problems nor solutions arise in a vacuum.

The course notes culture as a means of engaging or grounding the abstract precepts of rational planning processes. In development policy-making, where power unevenness characterise donor-beneficiary relationships, a culturally aware or multi-knowledge approach has the capacity to temper the one-size-fit-all interventions that hardly serve the purposes of improving well-being.

The thematic issues for the lectures/seminars include: meanings of culture, markets, planning and development; modes of knowledge production; ethnicity; gender and household dynamics; social capital, NGOs and micro-level inputs to policy-making. Illustrative cases will be drawn from both the South and the North.
Form of teaching
The course has multiple teaching approaches. Lectures and seminars.
Assessment
An essay on a given text, with a length of 8-10 pages. Graded on the scale of A-F.
Examination semester
Autumn
Type of course
Theoretical.
Level of course/Year of study
First or second year at master's level.
Language of instruction
English
Recommended reading/syllabus
Available on request.

More Information about SPL-3010