Social Justice, Technology and Development

Technological changes are often at the core of development projects and societal controversies. Examples include biofuels, transgenic crops, land redistribution, pesticides, microcredits, and the introduction of novel information technologies. This course deals with theories and concrete situations in which social justice issues are intertwined with technological change. The course offers frameworks for analyzing inequality, poverty, power, knowledge, and colonial legacies in social transformations and representations of injustice.The frameworks for such social analyses of technology and development is interdisciplinary as it uses selected notions from political philosophy, science and technology studies, development studies, sociology and anthropology.
This course introduces key concepts of social justice theories and contains exercises to work with these concepts. We will discuss how development studies can be framed in social justice terms. Through case studies, we analyse social injustices and also explore alternatives to work towards social justice.

• Explain key concepts and theories regarding social justice and development

• Apply issues of social justice, technology, and development to concrete case studies

• Identify issues of inequality, marginalization, and power differences in current negotiations of development and technology

• Critically engage with research literature and place it in a wider theoretical context through a written essay

• ? (65%)
• ? (35%) Individual essay. Re-submission of an improved version of an insufficiently graded review paper is possible in resitB (May) period of Wageningen University.

CPT11806 Technology, Development and Natural Resources;
ENP22803 Theories and Themes: Sociology;
RSO20806 Agricultural and Rural Development: Sociological Perspectives.

• You are required to read the selected obligatory readings of the course. The obligatory readings consist of selected book chapters and articles on theories and case studies on social (in)justices.