Dr Elliott Green, V504

For students taking MSc Development Management, MSc Development Studies, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc Population and Development, MSc Environment and Development, MSc Human Rights, MPA Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public Policy and Management, MSc Global Politics, MSc NGOs and Development, MSc Urbanisation and Development and MSc Health, Community and Development only.

The course looks at social, economic and political processes accompanying humanitarian disasters and civil wars.

The course examines the consequences and causes of humanitarian disasters. It looks at the changing nature of civil conflicts, at the famine process, and at the benefits that may arise for some groups from war and famine. It examines some of the roots of violence in civil wars, as well as the information systems that surround and help to shape disasters. Case studies will be drawn mostly from Africa but also from the Middle East and other parts of the world.

The course will be taught in MT and will consist of 10 lectures of one-and-a-half hours and nine seminars of one-and-a-half hours.

Students will have the opportunity to receive feed back on formative work, either in the form of a mock exam or a practice assessed essay.

A detailed weekly reading list will be provided at the first course meeting. There is one book you are advised to buy, namely David Keen, Complex Emergencies (Polity, 2007). Other texts of interest include Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006); David Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone (James Currey, 2005); Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge University Press, 2005); Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines (Oxford University Press, 1981); Frances Stewart and Valpy FitzGerald (eds.), War and Underdevelopment, Volumes 1 and 2 (Oxford University Press, 2001); and Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Violence: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Assessment of course work worth 20% and an unseen two-hour examination in the ST worth 80%.