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Activism, Development and Violence: Global Systems, Local Encounters (001IRS)

30 credits, Level 6

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll 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 you 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
• climate change.

You’ll 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. You‘ll 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 problematise the Global South as a location of violence and encourage students to rethink the relationship between the local and the global.

Topics covered include:

• rethinking development: between the bureaucratic and the political
• reform versus radical transformation
• development beyond improvement: solidarity, unsettling hegemony
• humanitarianism/war/Yemen/Palestine
• colonialism/reparations/WWI
• abolition/policing/alternative development.

 

 

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 267 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2025/26. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Courses

This module is offered on the following courses:

• International Relations BA