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 to analyse inequality, poverty, power in social transformations, and representations of injustice. The framework for this social analysis of technological change 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. The technologies that are used as cases include both social engineering technologies (such as land reform or standards) as well as new, complex artefacts, such as transgenic crops. Later parts of the course address political ecology, indigenous knowledge, and the practical prospects of governing innovation and technology on a global scale.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Explain key concepts and theories regarding social justice and development
• Apply issues of social justice, technology, and development to concrete case studies in areas such as agriculture, communication technologies, electricity, and so on
• 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

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