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DISTRIBUTION II: HISTORY & TRADITION. FULFILLS COLLEGE QUANT DATA ANALYSIS REQ.
Class: Tuesday 3:00-6:00
Instructor: David Ludden. 215B College Hall. Office Hours: Tues 12:30-2:30 and by email appointment
This course considers hunger and poverty as features of market economies. It provides technical skills for measuring the extent, severity, and causation of nutritional deprivation amidst economic growth. It analyzes institutions and policies that seek to overcome the tendency of markets to sustain inequalities including hunger and poverty.
We concentrate on empirical evidence, case studies, and quantitative analysis. Coursework stresses practical skills in gathering and using empirical data, especially statistics, and it includes using the worldwide web as a research tool.
There are no exams. Grading is based on class participation (5%), weekly assignments (70%), and a final project (25%). Details of marks for each week are on the weekly schedule. Grading calculations convert numeric to letter grades. This course demands substantial independent work that increases as the term progresses.
We will have a tutorial session with a Blackboard specialist, Elizabeth Sheyder <scheydec@sas.upenn.edu> in our first class meeting. Anytime throughout the term, students can consult with her by email for help with Blackboard.
The final paper demands research and planning. Students must formulate a clear reseach question and compile and analyze data to answer that question. Here is the assignment. On October 11, a reference librarian, Laurie Allen <laallen@pobox.upenn.edu> will tearch library research techniques. She is available whenever students need help.
Books to buy at House of Our Own bookstore, 3920 Spruce Street.
E.M.Young, World Hunger, Routledge 1997.
Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford U Press 1981.
Weekly Schedule (*special dates, marks deducted for absence) [full marks for day] {text reading}
1. Sept. 13. Introduction. Blackboard tutorial.
2. Sept. 20. Poverty [5] Powerpoint slides 1. view HTML. download PPT
3. Sept. 27. Hunger [5] Powerpoint 2. view HTML. download PPT
4. Oct. 4. Market Economies [5]
5.* Oct. 11. Research Materials [5] Class meets in Meyerson Conf. room, Van Pelt. {all Young}
6. Oct. 18. No Class. Fall Break
7.* Oct. 25. Entitlements [15] (Film in class on Bengal Famine) {Sen}
8. Nov. 1. Environments [10] {finish Sen}
10. Nov. 15. Globalization [15] -- WDR2000/1: view HTML download PPT
11.* Nov. 22. Institutions [5] (project draft due). student papers.
12.* Nov. 29. Policies. student papers [revisions]
13. Dec. 6. Trends. student papers [revisions]
(14.) Dec. 13. Tuesday, 5PM. (final project due) [25]
Detailed Syllabus
Concepts of poverty are becoming more complex and diverse. There is no consensus on the best way to define poverty, and thus the best way to measure it or evaluate trends. Statistics on poverty need to be read carefully with their technical attributes, strengths, and weaknesses in view.
Assignments:
• In Blackboard H388 site,
write and submit short four paragraphs, each of which summarize the most important points of one of the following readings. Note the overlaps and differences among readings. DO NOT cut and paste, quote, or paraphrase readings! Best strategy is to read each, write short paragraphs, and then go back to revise each paragraph on the basis of all four.
Reading :
Ravi Kanbur and Lyn Squire, “The Evolution of Thinking about Poverty: Exploring the Interactions" 1999. 33pp.
C.R. Laderchi, R. Saith and F. Stewart, “Everyone Agrees We Need Poverty Reduction, But Not What This Means.” WIDER paper 2003. 42pp.
Amartya Sen, Poverty isn't defined merely by GDP ..."and "From Income Inequality to Economic Inequality."
World Bank, PovertyNet Introduction Page (with live links) World Bank, World Development Report 2000/1 Attacking Poverty. Chapter 1: The Nature and Evolution of Poverty.
Powerpoint slides from lectures: view HTML. download PPT ...
IFPRI measuring poverty slides. HTML. download PPT
The lack of sufficient food to live a health life is a measure of poverty. Hunger and malnutrition are also health issues amenable to medical analysis and policy interventions that do not deal directly with poverty. Statistical relationships between food supply and population are classical topics of debate and research in intellectual traditions descending from Thomas Malthus that inflect discourses of agriculture, birth control, gender, ecology, and environmentalism.
Assignment:
• Identify online dataset. Where?
Some ideas:
- Data downloads in left frame.
- Search HungerWeb and Global Policy Forum, for "statistics."
- "Statistics" link in HDR2005.
- Links in World Bank PovertyNet.
- Google "world poverty statistics."
- H388 Course Page.
• Extract data from dataset, download.
• Create Excel spreadsheet and simple data graph.
• Mount graph on website.
• Explain origin and utility of data and message of graph.
Read:
Peter Uvin, “The State of World Hunger.” ... FAO DES data map. What is ACC/SCN?
Introduction in Laurie DeRose, Ellen Messer, and Sara Millman, Who's hungry? And how do we know? Food shortage, poverty, and deprivation. United Nations University, 1998. (the whole book is online).
Powerpoint slides 2. view HTML. download PPT
Ref:
Using Middle Upper Arm Circumference to assess severe adult malnutrition
Fetus malnutrition and stunting
Markets operate inside economies demarcated by national state borders. The world of market economies thus includes much more than markets: it embraces a huge variety of national systems and cultures as well as institional regimes of governance. The 1992 Human Development Report discussed "the workings of ... global markets and how they meet, or fail to meet, the needs of the world's poorest people" and attempted "to place global markets in proper perspective." Its authors assert the following concerning the need for regulatory activity and non-market interventions to meet the needs of the poor:
Competitive markets are the best guarantee for efficient production. But these markets must be open to all the people. They require a skilfully crafted regulatory framework. And they must be supplemented by judicious social policy action. "It is not a question of state or market: each has a large and irreplaceable role," as the World Bank's World Development Report 1991 aptly summed up.
Assignment:
Using PApoor1993 data, answer the following questions with brief prose statements
and make one chart to represent your data analysis:
Which PA counties have respectively the highest and lowest percentage of poor people (poverty rate)?
What proportion of the PA poor population live in Philadelphia?
How much poorer is Philadelphia than other counties by poverty rate and proportion of PA poor population?
Use the PA county map to locate richer and poorer PA counties geographically. What can you say about spatial patterns of poverty in southeastern Pennsylvania? What might be the political implications of this pattern?
Read and come to class ready to discuss:
David Ludden, "Development Regimes in South Asia: History and the Governance Conundrum" (orginal in Economic and Political Weekly, 10 Sept 2005)
Liz Young, World Hunger, pp. 1-86.
Recommended additional reading:
Laura Curran. "The culture of race, class, and poverty: the emergence of a cultural discourse in early cold war social work (1946-1963)".
Thomas W. Pogge, "Economic Justice and National Borders."
E.Rosenbaum, "What is a Market: On the Methodology of a Contested Concept "
Amartya Sen, "Economic Metholodogy: Heterogeneity and Relevance."
5. Oct. 11. Research Orientations.
Library Seminar CLASS meets in Meyerson Conference room, second floor of Van Pelt.
Finishing reading Liz Young, World Hunger.
Assignment -- DUE 12 noon Oct 25 -- you have three weeks to finish it
Note: this is a two-part assignment that builds on ALL READING TO OCT 25 and on the Library tutorial today during class. The first part of the assignment goes into the Assignment section in Blackboard, and the second, into the Discussion Board.
Write and post in Blackboard Assignment FOUR short, coherent paragraphs, one to accomplish each of the following:
(1) identify the conceptual orientation of your final project for this course, that is, your intellectual starting point, e.g. personal interests that motivate your work;
(2) describe a basic project idea, that is, a topic or problem;
(3) connect your conceptial orientation and project idea to course reading -- that connection might be tenuous or contentious, but make it -- and particularly I am interested in your connecting your work explicitly -- even if critically or oppositionally -- to the Liz Young reading, which touches many topics, including Amartya Sen's entitlement approach;
(4) describe one important scholarly reading and a data source that could anchor your project. You should be able to find these with the help of the Library tutorial with Laurie Allen on 11 October. These identifications do not comprise a permanent commitment. They are a starting point. You can change your project plan later, but IF you do change, you will have to submit a revised prospectus ... see below.
Write and post in Blackboard Discussion Board a brief prospectus for your final project including
(1) the problem you will address,
(2) a brief account of ONE scholarly article that deals with the problem in a useful way (provide link if available),
(3) a brief account of data that seems useful for addressing that problem (provide link if available),
(4) an account of the analytical approach you will take to the data in order to address the problem.
This prospectus does not comprise a permanent commitment. It is a starting point. You can change your project later, but IF you do change, you will have to submit a revised prospectus, and email the classlist [HIST388-001-05C@lists.upenn.edu] to direct everyone to the new prospectus on the Discussion Board.
6. Oct. 18. NO CLASS. FALL BREAK
NOTE:
The next three weeks entail heavy work worth 35 points in final grade.
Amartya Sen is most widely associated with the "entitlement approach," which he deploys to explain famine deaths in Poverty and Famines, where he relies on quantitative data, market-based analysis, and case studies to argue that entitlement failures cause famine death, not the rapid decline of food availability. His data do not allow him direct access to either food poverty or food deprivation, which he seeks, however, to prove cause malnutrition death, rather than food shortage. How he makes his argument, what he accomplishes, and what he does not, concern us here. For the next three weeks, we focus on three problems raised by Poverty and Famines: (1) how to use historical statistics and case studies to make general arguments about causation, (2) how to appreciate the historical particularity of cases that may weakly or strongly support general arguments, and (3) the relevance of qualitative data, non-market entitlements, and gender. The last of these problems appears vividly when we consider a brilliant film by Satyajit Ray on the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, which we see in class today.
Assignment detailed on Oct 11, above, due today at 12noon.
Film in Class, "Distant Thunder." PPT view. download
Read:
Sen, Poverty and Famines. pp. 1-85.
Amartya Sen, " ... Gender Inequality " ... " "Missing Women,"
Cecile Jackson, “Women and Poverty or Gender and Well-Being?”
Recommended additional reading:
C.Cozzarelli, MJ Tagler, AV Wilkinson, "Do middle class students perceive poor women and poor men differently."
Steven Pressman, "Explaining the Gender Poverty Gap in Developed and Transitional Economies."
Famines considered by Sen occurred in specific historical environment defined by nature, politics, economies, institutions, and social change. To some extent, all the cases support his general argument, but particularities that appear in the process of comparison also raise issues that he does not consider, or glosses over. For instance, food shortages caused by drought, storms, and war are generally considered causal features of famine, and they seem to have been significant in several if not all of his cases, to varying degrees. Social adaptations to famine seem also quite different, as to the social and economic bases of entitlements, in the African as distinct from the South Asian cases. The two studies of Bengal indicate major changes in the institutional environment between 1944 and 1974. This week, we are concerned with such particularities and their contribution to general arguments about causation.
Read:
Sen, Poverty and Famines, pp. 86-166.
Eve Crowley, "Rural Poverty: Population Dynamics, Local Institutions, and Access to Resources."
Assignment:
Use data from the Sen book to make an argument concerning one or more of the famine events he considers in the book. You can use other data as well. You can argue in agreement or disagreement with Sen. One likely area for disagreement concerns the role of food shortage in causing famine, which appears stronger in some cases than others. One way to improve upon Sen's presentation and argument would be to combine data from different tables, for instance to demonstrate regional variations. One example is here. Readymade Sen datafiles are SendataXLS and SendataHTM. Note: This assignment represents preparation for next week's assignment.
Disruptive events occur in contexts that render some people and places more vulnerable to destitution: that is one of Sen's general arguments, though he does not phrase it that way. Wars, droughts, floods, tsunamis, storms, and dislocations wrought by state development projects have in common their assault on vulnerable people. People also fight back to protect themselves and to improve powers to acquire what is available inside national economies but denied to them; and their fighting can generate disruptions that afflict the more vulberable among them. Collective resistance and war lie in the background or off-stage in Sen's work, and we bring them centerstage this week, as we consider vulnerability in the contexts of intstitutional efforts to mitigate single crises, to predict and defend people against recurring crises, and to reduce crisis vulnerability.
Read:
James K. Boyce, "Let the eat risk? Wealth, rights, and disaster vulnerability."
S.M.Mursed and Scott Gates,"Spatial-Horizontal Inequality and Maoist Insurgency in Nepal."
B.K.Gellert and B.D.Lynch,"MegaProjects as Displacements."
Jean Dreze and Haris Gasdar, "Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991."
Reference
Tomorrow's Hunger: vulnerability analysis
MEDIA BRIEF: WFP's HUNGER MAP AND HUNGER HOT SPOTS 2001
Ellen Messer, Conflict as a cause of hunger, Armed Conflict and HungerAssignment:
Write a short essay, no more than five pages in length, using details from TWO and only two case studies in Poverty and Famines to clarify the particularity of each case and specify its contribution to Sen's argument.
Read all of these (this is the last reading).
World Bank, World Development Report 2000/1.Chapter 1, The Nature and Evolution of Poverty. and Chapter 2: Causes of Poverty and a Framework for Action.
Human Development Report 1998 overview.
Human Development Report 2005 Chapter 2, Inequality
Mark Weisbrot et al, "Scorecard on globalization: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress, 1980-2000"
Amartya Sen, "How to judge globalism," The American Prospect , Jan 1, 2002
Interview with Ankie Hoogvelt (original) why globalization is not so global and all-inclusive as the word indicates. .. and this separation of economic zones amidst globalization is described as structural disarticulation ---
Jie Huang, "Structural Disarticulation and Third World Human Development."
Assignment:
This assignment has two parts.All our work now focuses on the refinement of skills you will need to perfect your final projects. Read the final project assignment, below, and keep it in mind as you work on this assignment.
IF YOU CANNOT FINISH THIS ASSIGNMENT TO YOUR SATISFACTION by noon Tuesday, DO IT ANYWAY, and revise it later. Class discussion will give you revision ideas.
Part 1. Focus on statistical arguments in the World Development Report (WDR) and Human Development Reports (HDR). Identify ONE specific argument in EACH of TWO readings, that is, a total of TWO separate arguments. Consider the effectiveness with which authors use data to make their arguments, that is, the fit between data, calculation, and argumentation. You might want to consider alternative arguments that could be made with the same data; other data and/or ways to use the data same to address the argument. You do not need to engage in critique, but you do need to show that you know how the authors use data; considering alternatives will help, but you do not need to explicate alternatives.
Students who are particularly interested in the World Bank's way of thinking about poverty might want to dig into the later, more detailed chapters of WDR2000/1 for this part of the assignment. That is fine. I will use material from these chapters in class. Here are links on local server: Chap 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Part 2. Now focus on arguments that Weisbrot, Sen, Hoogvelt, and Huang make. Tell me specifically any TWO of these readings influence your interpretation the WDR and HDR. A good place to begin is to consider Hoogvelt's quote of Immanuel Castell's definition of "globalization": "'a process in which there is an economy in real time on a planetary basis,' but that does not necessarily involve everybody."
For more on exclusion/stratification within globalization, see Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Postcolonial Third World: The New Political Economy of Development. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). The best empirical assessments of structural adjustment policy are by the Structural Adjustment Participatory Policy Review Network (SAPRIN).
Project Draft Due
Final Project Assignment:
(1) Define a problem with a specific question.
(2) Write a brief account of ONE piece of scholarly writing that deals with that question. (provide link if available).
(3) Identify and describe a dataset that helps to answer that question. (provide link if available),
(4) Describe the analytical approach you take to the data, and the methods that you use to use that data to answer your question.
(5) Answer the question the best you can, using graphic or other representations of data that best suit your purpose.
2100 words (7 pages double spaced with 12 pt font) will suffice. This will occupy more or less space depending on how you decide to present your data.
Your question might be purely descriptive -- e.g. How much poverty, how deep, etc -- or explanatory -- e.g. Why this trend or that?Your problem question can be about the data -- How good is it, what does its mode of production tell us? or What does it obscure about its topic?"
You can question the use of data by some scholar or institution, like Amartya Sen or The World Bank, and consider how their data squares with others' or with interpretations that others (inlcuding you) might make of their very own data.
Grading on this assignment will be very strict. I want to see that you know how to find and use numbers to answer a question convincingly, that you are fully accountable for how you use numbers, that you can use them responsibly and accurately to make a point they support and you can defend against refutation.Consider your answer to your question an argument and be prepared to defend yourself, using data. To get prepared, be aware of questoins about your data and/or argument that already exist.
The scholarly work you peg your assignment to should make those question apparent. If you find yourself relying on prose that does not indicate opposing positions, you should be able to generate them yourself. Ask yourself, "What are the problems with the way I am using the data, and with the data I am using?" You should be able to answer such questions.
PAPERS to discuss today explicitly deal with spatial matters: (1) Urban-Rural differences: Jean, Edin, Christy, Ugo. (2) Spaces of exclusion: Nathan. (3) Territorial regimes: Mehar, Jackie, Cassandra, Jared, Mary Kate, Jere. (4) Gendered spaces: Anna, Cindy Lou, Corinne, Angela. (5) Dam spaces: Jonathan, Marc, Jay, Michelle, Ryan.