杏吧论坛

Prof David Keen CON.6.06

This course is available on the MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and Columbia), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and Hertie), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and NUS), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and Sciences Po), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and Tokyo), MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in Development Management, MSc in Development Management (杏吧论坛 and Sciences Po), MSc in Development Studies, MSc in Economic Policy for International Development, MSc in Health and International Development, MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics, MSc in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (杏吧论坛 and Sciences Po), MSc in Political Economy of Late Development, MSc in Urban Policy (杏吧论坛 and Sciences Po), MSc in Urbanisation and Development and Master of Public Administration. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Places will be allocated with priority to ID and joint-degree students. If there are more ID and joint-degree students than DV420 can accommodate, these places will be allocated randomly.  Non-ID/Joint Degree students will be allocated to spare places by random selection with the preference given first to those degrees where the regulations permit this option.

When genocides, civil wars and famines are reported on television in countries such as Syria, Sudan or Yemen, we are often left with a sense of confusion. Why is this happening? Why do these disasters keep recurring? And which actors are driving the process? This course looks behind the headlines to get a deeper understanding of the causes and functions of humanitarian disasters.

By re-thinking common conceptions of conflict (such as the idea that war is a contest between two or more sides aiming to ‘win’), the course offers new ways of thinking about war, humanitarian intervention and peacebuilding. Who benefits from conflict? Who benefits from famine? How do these benefits shape the information we receive? How is the ‘enemy’ defined, and whose interests do these changing definitions serve? And how can one make peace a peace that doesn’t propel society back into war?

The course offers an understanding of the complex fault-lines that lie behind oversimplistic news coverage. It also expands our understanding of disasters to take account of the fact that many disasters (from climate change to ‘migration crisis’, from Covid to democratic crisis) are now ‘coming home’ as far as Western democracies a