International Rural Social Change

Catalog description

Implications of planned change for international rural societies, considering basic structural constraints, known institutional linkages, and potential synergetic consequences. R SOC (CEDEV) 517 International Rural Social Change (3) Three-quarters of the world's population live in developing countries where problems of hunger, malnutrition, underemployment, high morbidity and mortality, overurbanization, and inadequate housing, (to name just a few) often are severe. This seminar covers the sociology of economic change in developing countries. Through an extensive list of readings, a series of topical videos, and in-depth class discussions, seminar participants should come away with a firm grounding in the ways development has been defined, the social and economic problems facing developing countries today, the basic ways in which economic development has been approached theoretically and empirically, the implications for developing countries of being embedded in a larger world economy, the influence of multinational corporations, the policies that developing countries have followed in fostering economic growth, the nature of foreign aid, the causes and consequences of Third World debt, the nature of the informal economy, rural development and land reform, world hunger and the Green Revolution, and other topics.