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Amizade Global Service-Learning > Past Programs
Summer 2006
This program is now closed.
Program Title: International Development
Academic Departments: Political Sceince
Intercultural Location: Cochabamba, Bolivia
Academic Instructor: Reinhard Heinisch, Ph.D.
Service-Learning Facilitator: Jessica Friedrichs
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Program Description
This course objective is to examine the problems of political development
in the context of a service learning field experience. In this
particular case, the course is built around student participation
in the construction and expansion of a school in an indigenous
community near Cochabamba, Bolivia. Specifically, the course focuses
on the problems of development and democracy within the context
of Andean society, by approaching the topic in four stages:
* Providing an overview of the political and economic history of
Latin America by paying special attention to its unique political
characteristics, social stratification, and specific patterns of
economic development. This segment will discuss the impact of colonization
and independence, social stratification, specific Latin American
patterns of political organization and regime types as well as
different forms of political resistance (both indigenous and imported
revolutionary models). Students should thus become familiar with
concepts such as caudillismo, corporatism and cooption, bureaucratic-authoritarianism,
extra-constitutional powers, classical and neo-populism, indigenous
identity politics, etc.
* Analyzing Bolivia as a Case Study: Being landlocked and one of
the poorest nations in Latin America, the country quintessentially
embodies many of the structural features and patterns that have
shaped Latin American political development: dependence on silver
and tin as a source of wealth, experiments in laissez-faire capitalism,
a succession of elite controlled governments, profound racial and
class-based stratification, deplorable conditions for the indigenous
majority, military rule, weak governments, economic mismanagement,
and a recent surge of populism. This segment will especially discuss
the consequences of US pressure to pursue aggressive economic reforms
and crack down on coca cultivation.
* Providing a Survey of development strategies ranging from the
modernization theory, import substitution, and dependent development
to more recent approaches centered on state capacity, economic
liberalization, and micro-level/community development.
* Studying the Andean indigenous community.
This segment highlights the situation of the indigenous population
at the beginning of the 21 century. Organizationally based on household
economics, the traditional comunidad campesina has its roots in
the system of redistribution and trade in Inca society. This world,
defined by Andean reciprocity, aspects of barter, subsistence farming
and struggles over land tenure and communal control, is changing
rapidly as the cash economy, neo-liberal reforms, and political
enfranchisement have impacted the indigenous societies. As hundreds
of thousands of Aymaras and Quechuas have flocked to the cities,
they have become politically organized and increasingly radicalized,
forming the basis of identity-based, often populist politics.
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Academic Details
Academic credits are awarded for this course through West Virginia
University. The program will fulfill 6 academic credits in Political
Science:
- Political Science Special Topics: International Development
-
3 undergraduate credits (POLS 493)
AND
- Political Science Special Topics: Global Service-Learning
- 3
undergraduate credits (POLS 493Z)
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Program Timeline
May 1
Online classroom discussions begin
May 14 - June 7
Intercultural Service-Learning
in Cochabamba, Bolivia
June 5 - 20
Online classroom discussions and
completion of program
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