AP/SOSC 4607 3.00

Indigeneity and International Development

This course examines the significance of discourses on indigeneity for the theory and practice of international development. The course sets out the multiple, purposive, and often contradictory articulations of indigenousness as a site of agency and contention in the interactions between indigenous communities and international development agents, such as NGOs, international organizations, states, and funding agencies.

The course reviews contending conceptual understandings of indigenousness and ethnic identity (including primordialism, instrumentalism, Marxism, feminism, decolonizing scholarship, and post-colonial / post-structuralist approaches) in relation to forms of resistance, representation, engagement and countenance of alternative forms of development. Collaborative research methodologies, in particular their potential to construct bridges and intercultural dialogues between agents in knowledge production interacting in international development, will also be explored. The course builds on these theoretical foundations and conceptual landscapes and then moves on to a systematic analysis of experiences and case studies emerging from the Global South.

Key concepts and processes to be examined in this course include: indigenousness, power, knowledge, identity, representation, gender, race, ethnicity, community, territory, citizenship, class, indigenous agency and mobilization, international law on the rights of indigenous peoples, neocolonialism and development.