Course Information

Course Name	Turkish	Kalkınma Ekonomisi
	English	Development Economics
Course Code	ECN 303E	Credit	Lecture (hour/week)	Recitation (hour/week)	Laboratory (hour/week)
Semester	1	3	3	-	-
Course Language		English
Course Coordinator		Umut Kuruüzüm
Course Objectives		As the 2020 Human Development Report recognized, inequalities in human development have been increasing in line with slowing social mobility, restricted access to education and health, signs of backsliding democracy, growing human displacement due to war and violence, and swelling political instability around the world. This unfavourable situation probably could not get any worse in 2020. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, as a reflection of the anthropogenic pressures put on earth by human carbon, material footprint as well as the depletion of biodiversity, may have pushed some 100 million people into extreme poverty, threatening what has been achieved in the fight against poverty and inequality in the last 30 years (Human Development Report 2020, 6). While driving human populations into poverty and inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic also presents and alerts us with increased zoonotic infections, signs of land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and intensifying climate-related migration and displacement. Since the turn of the millennium the polarization between rich and poor has widened, personal debt deepened, and employment insecurity intensified to new heights both in the global south and global north. The course is designed to provide a relational economic understanding of development under late capitalism. How is poverty being produced, managed, and experienced? Should we build affordable, social housing to tackle urban poverty, or increase employment opportunities and job security, or simply give cash directly to the poor? Conventional approaches are still prevalent in our culture failing to provide solutions to complex socio-ecological problems. Policymakers continue to advocate for deterministic policy alternatives that prioritize limitless economic growth over the well-being of humans and non-human species living in an anthropogenic ecosystem. This course will introduce students to the burgeoning inter-and trans-disciplinary field of development economics. After a brief introduction to poverty and urban poverty traps, the course will focus on informality, precarious employment, housing and infrastructure, feminisation of work, credits, and circulation of cash in relation to the concept of poverty. During the term, we will also learn novel paradigms that challenge the fundamental doctrines of what the market initiative is built upon in the age of intensifying climate crisis, inequality, and eco-systematic uncertainty. At the conclusion of the course students should walk away with a firm enough grasp of the empirical realities, key economic concepts, and theoretical and policy debates of contemporary development goals to proficiently and reflexively participate research and development practices.
Course Description		As the 2020 Human Development Report recognized, inequalities in human development have been increasing in line with slowing social mobility, restricted access to education and health, signs of backsliding democracy, growing human displacement due to war and violence, and swelling political instability around the world. This unfavourable situation probably could not get any worse in 2020. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, as a reflection of the anthropogenic pressures put on earth by human carbon, material footprint as well as the depletion of biodiversity, may have pushed some 100 million people into extreme poverty, threatening what has been achieved in the fight against poverty and inequality in the last 30 years (Human Development Report 2020, 6). While driving human populations into poverty and inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic also presents and alerts us with increased zoonotic infections, signs of land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and intensifying climate-related migration and displacement. Since the turn of the millennium the polarization between rich and poor has widened, personal debt deepened, and employment insecurity intensified to new heights both in the global south and global north. The course is designed to provide a relational economic understanding of development under late capitalism. How is poverty being produced, managed, and experienced? Should we build affordable, social housing to tackle urban poverty, or increase employment opportunities and job security, or simply give cash directly to the poor? Conventional approaches are still prevalent in our culture failing to provide solutions to complex socio-ecological problems. Policymakers continue to advocate for deterministic policy alternatives that prioritize limitless economic growth over the well-being of humans and non-human species living in an anthropogenic ecosystem. This course will introduce students to the burgeoning inter-and trans-disciplinary field of development economics. After a brief introduction to poverty and urban poverty traps, the course will focus on informality, precarious employment, housing and infrastructure, feminisation of work, credits, and circulation of cash in relation to the concept of poverty. During the term, we will also learn novel paradigms that challenge the fundamental doctrines of what the market initiative is built upon in the age of intensifying climate crisis, inequality, and eco-systematic uncertainty. At the conclusion of the course students should walk away with a firm enough grasp of the empirical realities, key economic concepts, and theoretical and policy debates of contemporary development goals to proficiently and reflexively participate research and development practices.
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