Resilience and Global Development

Course Description

Resilience has gained influence as an organizing principle for international development in recent years. Resilience refers to the ability of individuals or groups to maintain well-being, and possibly transform it, despite social and environmental shocks. The course will explore the rise of resilience in international development from its emergence in the wake of the global financial and food price crises in 2008 and the 2011 famine in the Horn of Africa, to the current global uncertainty in foreign assistance and its current emphasis on poverty reduction, food and livelihood security, and other beneficial well-being outcomes. In particular, the class will interrogate different logic models of resilience, examine how program personnel put resilience into practice, and engage with the methods used to generate evidence for resilience programming impacts. A meta-question underlying this course reflects our moment in time: what is lost and gained by the recent retraction in international funding for resilience and development? The course will draw on a curated reading list of influential empirical studies and essays, guest lectures from development practitioners, collaborative activities, and an exploratory research project. The research project will help develop skills in conducting systematic evidence reviews and help them evaluate how justifications for resilience programming align with observable evidence of impact.

Code

RESI 611

Credits

3

Subject

Social & Behavioral Sci Admin