The K.U.Leuven runs the two-year interfaculty course 'Interdisciplinary perspectives on Development and Cultures'. The general objective of the course is to raise critical and interdisciplinary reflections on essential and pressing problems concerning development (cooperation) and North-South relations. In 2009-2010, the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA) coordinates the debates in collaboration with the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning (ASRO). The focus of this year's series is on Cities in Development: Spaces, Conflicts and Agency.
CITIES IN DEVELOPMENT
The social, cultural, economic and political trajectories of many cities in the Global South have often developed along completely different historical lines than those of cities in Europe and the West. Very often, cities in the South are depicted as problematic or even pathological entities marked by lack, decay, scarcity and marginalisation, by increasing poverty and de-industrialisation, by violence and breakdown, or by an increasing lack of space and an ever-growing demographic density. Although to some extent this might be true, the use of the words 'poverty', 'violence', 'slum', etc, has also rendered invisible the everyday practices and experiences of urban dwellers, the concrete content of urban life as lived on a daily basis. These specific urban worlds often remain 'shadow cities' (Neuwirth 2006), in which the people who inhabit them are reduced to a sort of invisible 'excess humanity' (Davis 2006), ignoring their capacity to negotiate conditions of 'scarcity', 'exclusion', 'poverty'.
This debates and presentations series seeks to offer an interdisciplinary reflection on the development of cities in the Global South, and the different dynamics that shape these urban sites today. Renowned architects, urban planners, anthropologists, geographers, activists, artists, sociologists and engineers will share with us their alternative readings of these specific urban spaces, whether slums in Mumbai, favelas in Rio, townships in Cape town, or settlements in the Gaza strip. The lectures will acknowledge both the tensions and conflicts at work in such sites, as well as the opportunities that are generated thanks to or in spite of them. Finally, the debates will also pay a great deal of attention to the specific ways in which civil society's and city dwellers' 'agency' is enabled or disabled by such urban environments. As such, presentations and debates will question the interactions between spaces, conflicts and agency as fields of practice and research.
NORTH/SOUTH
Despite the booming sciences and decades of international development co-operation and neo-liberal globalisation, the yawning gap between the poor and the rich, between the centre and the periphery, keeps widening, in both North and South.
DEVELOPMENT
It is obvious that numerous development problems here and there have entangled roots. 'Development' is increasingly considered a complex and multifarious issue which stands in need of re-conceptualizations in terms of sustainability, inter-cultural management, quality life and ecological and socio-cultural embedding. The call for inter-disciplinary, inter-cultural and cultures-sensitive approaches is being heeded worldwide.
INTERDISCIPLINARY
This inter-faculty course seeks to provide a rigorous interdisciplinary theoretical and applied education in development and cultures studies. Its aim is also to encourage in-depth scientific debates as well as a large social response to the urgent problems. The debates should open up to other cultures and their endogenous knowledge systems and plural ethical orientations.
A BROADER BASE
International organizations, especially NGOs, badly need professionals from interdisciplinary backgrounds and integral viewpoints. This course offers young graduates a broader base and possibly compensates for a lack of field experience.
JOINT-FUNDED BY VLIR
The Interdisciplinary Debates on Development and Cultures is joint-funded with the VLIR-UOS (Vlaamse interuniversitaire Raad - University Development Cooperation)
