War and Security in North/South Perspective (761M9)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

This module invites you to think about contemporary war and (in)security in North-South terms.

A ‘North-South perspective’ draws on postcolonial approaches. It foregrounds the history and ongoing legacies of colonialism in today’s wars and (in)security, and the way the interaction between global North and South shapes them both. We’ll talk a lot about Eurocentrism, race and gender in the production of war and (in)security as problems or sites of global politics.

For example, you may have heard about civilian deaths from air strikes in Yemen and the related controversy over US and UK arms sales. It was actually the British who first used air power in the Middle East one-hundred years ago. It was used as a regime of terror (called ‘frightfulness’) to try to pacify and control the region. How are we to interpret today’s controversy over air strikes in light of this historical experience? This is the sort of question we’ll be trying to answer on this module.

There are two types of learning we hope you will engage with on this module:

• theoretical engagement with the idea of North-South relations, and debates about Eurocentrism, race and gender
• empirical engagement with specific cases, interpreted through the lens of North-South relations.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 24 hours of contact time and about 276 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.