070547 SE Seminar Vertiefung 2 (2011S)

Zur Vorbereitung wird der Besuch der VO Modernisation and Development Studies empfohlen, die im März und April 2x wöchentlich abgehalten wird.
It is highly recommended to attend the lecture course Modernisation and Development Studies.

Course description:
The course purposes to introduce students into 'hidden mechanism' of the called regions' catching up development over the past century and the first decade of the commenced new millennium. Despite some experiences of such development still in the XIX century (Germany, Japan, and tsarist Russia), this strategy as well as practical policies aimed at overcoming social-economic backwardness have to be considered taking into account the concrete character of the XX century capitalism and post-capitalism that has begun rising in the last two-three decades. Respectively, all attempts of the regions under scrutiny to narrow social-economic and technological gap between them and the leading western countries have been influenced by the processes, which took place in the core of the world system. At the same time, the internal conditions and social structures existed in the countries under scrutiny, impacted on their path and pace of social-economic and political development to no lesser degree than the external factors and impulses. A complicate combination of all factors, external and internal as well, predetermined results and depth of social changes in each concrete case. Hence, a correlation of the internal and external factors of (and challenges to) development cannot be ignored in the process of comparative study. What is particularly important for an analysis of such correlation is an inevitable rising of obstacles to further development in the process of development as itself, though these obstacles have the concrete character in each case study.
Behind the general problems concerning the catching up development experience, its success stories and failed modernisations as well, the following concrete issues of big importance are suggested to be discussed.
1) Why and how the industrial power with outstanding accomplishments in sciences, technologies and education in the past, namely, the former USSR, appropriates some features which are inherent to backward countries categorised as the Third World nations.
2) Will the fascinating growth of East Asian economies, including Chinese, succeed to replacement of the world-system core from West to East? Can we speak, observing undeniable achievements of India and China as well as the East Asian "tigers" in the past, that Asia undergoes the new long-term renaissance?
3) Can Latin America, in particular, Brazil, become the space of prosperity? Will Latin America follow for Brazil, which is the continental leader? Do ways of Brazil and other Latin American countries diverge from each other? Can Brazil transform herself from "tropical Russia" into "tropical Scandinavia", combining successfully economic modernisation and resolution of social problems?
The course deals with such concepts as central-peripheral structure of the world system, 'modernisation trap', and 'conservative modernisation', which are essentially important for understanding of the development process in the end of the XX century and today. The students who would choose the given course should find out the common features as well as differences that could be seen in various regions' development. One of the main problems that should have to be considered in a framework of the course concerns the global objective limits to successful industrial development in the conditions of globalisation.
The concrete study plan will be tailored to meet each student's interests, according to chosen topic of the Master's thesis for facilitating writing of the latter.