STS 6020

Digitizing Development

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2018-2019.

How are information technology and digital infrastructure reshaping global development? Conversely, how are distinctive conceptions of development shaping the construction of information infrastructure? This course critically analyzes the relationships between social and economic inequality, the environment, and information technology such as big data, smartphones, internet connectivity, remote sensing, and computing algorithms. Questions include: how is information technology used to structure labor forces? How does the production, maintenance, and use of these technologies reflect global political economy and power structures? In what ways does digital infrastructure shape understanding of and interventions into urban and rural environments, political institutions, and social movements? This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to answering these questions, drawing on recent scholarship from critical development studies, science and technology studies, geography, and anthropology. 

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (CA-AG)

• Students will be able to critically analyze contemporary scholarship across a range of social science disciplines that builds understanding of an emergent subfield at the intersection of critical development studies and science and technology studies.
• Students will be able to engage with peers in class discussion to advance development and critique of new ideas related to the ways in which development and the digital realm mutually impact each other.
• Students will be able to write a research paper or review paper on a course-driven topic or sub-field of their choosing, with the aim of submitting it for publication and/or incorporating it into dissertation exam preparation.

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