Course

Mandatory

Read about the Master Programme and find the Study Regulations at ruc.dk

You register for activities through stads selvbetjening during the announced registration period, which you can see on the Study administration homepage.

When registering for courses, please be aware of the potential conflicts and overlaps between course and exam time and dates. The planning of course activities at Roskilde University is based on the recommended study programmes, which should not overlap. However, if you choose optional courses and/or study plans that goes beyond the recommended study programmes, an overlap of lectures or exam dates may occur depending on which courses you choose.

This course provides students with an in-depth understanding of the causes and consequences of sustainability, development and inequality, including their social, environmental, economic, historical, political and spatial dimensions. Students are familiarised with different theoretical debates and cases relevant to the study of sustainability, development and inequality. Students acquire skills in how to apply these theories in order to critically understand and evaluate questions of sustainability, development and inequality, including their local, national, international and global dimensions. Students are enabled to interrogate diverse outcomes and understandings of sustainability, development, and inequality, allowing them to think of these topics in new ways and explore future pathways.

This course begins by presenting the environmental, economic, political and social dimensions of the concept of sustainability. Particular attention is paid to its historical links to ideas of growth and development, as captured, for example, in the Brundtland report and the notion of Sustainable Development, and to critiques arguing that such ideas may lead to further inequality. The course then presents the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the current iteration of sustainability, the history of this framework, the role of frameworks and the characteristics of this particular global framework. The following sessions go into more detail on the role of partnerships and the new actors, structures and processes that are part of contemporary approaches to sustainability, development and inequality. Some of the sessions are case based and linked to different contemporary themes pertaining to sustainability, development and inequality. Each session will link these themes to the relevant SDGs. One session includes an external visit to an organization working with SDGs. The last session will explore and discuss alternative development goals.

The course syllabus consists of journal articles, monographs, book chapters, and other case materials. All materials are available through https://soeg.kb.dk or will be made available on the course Moodle site.

Examples of readings include:

Nightingale, A.J. (Ed.). (2019). Environment and Sustainability in a Globalizing World (1st ed.). Routledge. Chapter 1: 3-12.

Fukuda-Parr, S., & Muchhala, B. (2020). The Southern origins of sustainable development goals: Ideas, actors, aspirations. World Development, 126, 104706.

Davis, K. E., Fisher, A., Kingsbury, B., & Merry, S., E. (2012). Governance by indicators: Global power through quantification and rankings. Oxford University Press [in association with] Institute for International Law and Justice, New York University School of Law.

Fukuda-Parr, S. (2016). From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals: shifts in purpose, concept, and politics of global goal setting for development. Gender & Development, 24(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2016.1145895

Mawdsley, E. (2018). ‘From billions to trillions’: Financing the SDGs in a world ‘beyond aid.’ Dialogues in Human Geography, 8(2), 191–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820618780789

Merry, S. E. (2019). The Sustainable Development Goals Confront the Infrastructure of Measurement. Global Policy, 10(S1), 146–148. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12606

Scheyvens, R., Banks, G and Hughes, E. (2016). The Private Sector and the SDGs: The Need to Move Beyond “Business as Usual.” Sustainable Development, 24(6), 371-382. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.1623

ECTS points for this course: 5 ECTS, i.e., ca 135 hrs work effort.

Course sessions: 10 x 2= 20 hrs

Written take-home exam: 20 hrs

Course preparation: 95 hrs

The activity is evaluated regularly based on the study board's evaluation procedure. The responsible for the activity will be informed of any evaluation of the activity at the start of the semester. See link to the study board's evaluation practice here: https://intra.ruc.dk/fileadmin/assets/ise/Undervisning/Evaluation_procedures_at_ISE.pdf

Detailed programme will be provided on Moodle

• Students acquire state-of-the-art knowledge and skills regarding the causes and consequences of sustainability, development and inequality, including their social, environmental, economic, political and spatial dimensions.

• They develop understanding of different theoretical debates and cases of sustainability, development, and inequality in their local, national, international, and global dimensions.

• They acquire an advanced understanding of different theoretical debates related to these subjects and develop skills in selecting and critically applying relevant theories and methods, including in choosing relevant approaches in order to investigate a problem area. They also develop skills in communicating and discussing theories and empirical results.

Individual written 48-hour take-home exam based on a posed exam question.

The exam should be structured around an overall argument.

Start the exam by briefly introducing your argument and then use the rest of the text to support your argument.

In your analysis focus on the causes and consequences of sustainability, development and inequality, including their social, environmental, political and/or spatial dimensions.

Make sure to counterpose different views and give reasons for the choices you make.

Make sure to include a discussion of how the different definitions of “development”, “sustainability” and “inequality” and their associated theories that we discussed in the course support your argument and analysis.

You must refer to and make analytical use of the course literature.

Don’t forget to reference properly and include a bibliography. Be specific – list articles and book chapters (not just the entire book). Never cite the teacher's presentation slides. Include proper referencing using the same referencing style throughout. Remember to include specific page numbers for in-text citations

In this course, the use of generative AI aids (GenAI) is not allowed when taking exams. Ordinary spell checking and other language suggestions as known from Word or other word processing programs are allowed without declaration.