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This course is about how Canadians understand and do international development. We examine this issue along a number of dimensions. First, Canadian society is not one-dimensional. Different interest groups within our society argue about what development means (and what it aims to achieve), how we should engage in development, and whether we are successful at it. In this course we explore three broad dimensions: - government (public) international development policy - private sector (corporate) development interventions and the intersections with government trade policy - civil society, non-government organizations (NGO) conceptions of development, and critiques of official and business policy. Second, development initiatives are experienced differently by developers (Canadians) and those who are developed (people in the developing world). We examine how development is experienced and understood by: - the developed world: those with the power, money, and skills to do development - The marginalized: those who are typically the objects of development. Third, developing societies have never been homogenous. As in developed societies, people in developing societies often disagree about what desirable development is, and whether development activities work. I'd like you to read and develop an understanding of how and why different sectors in the developing world respond differently to development initiatives: - how do business and political elites respond? - how do the poor and marginalized respond? We begin the course by looking inwards - by understanding your conscious and unconscious attitudes to the developing world and development, and then gradually widen our focus by looking first at Canada and then at the wider world. This course is both practical and political. We'll learn something about how development organizations in these various sectors operate from day-to-day, and we'll also ask bigger political questions, like: - how will international development work change in a world where the benevolent public sector drive of development gives way to an increasingly trade-driven agenda? - how will internal development work change in a political environment increasingly dominated by business interests, and by questions of economic efficiency rather than questions of value?