History 267 - The Country and the City

During the Cold War, as tensions raged between the U.S. and Soviet Union, policymakers of both ideological persuasions oversaw rural development projects across the Third World. Their actions were premised on knowledge that villages were underdeveloped places. Mainly a colonial idea, this thought also had curious antecedents such as the Indian anti-colonialist Gandhi who saw villages as reservoirs of tradition and bulwarks against modernity. This course questions the received wisdom of this dichotomy. Drawing on classic works and case studies from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it asks how the city and countryside became symbols for understanding social and economic development.