BSc International Disaster Management and Humanitarian Response and Arabic / Course details

Illicit economies pose significant challenges to development and peacebuilding in today’s world. Vast numbers of people live in societies in which illegality and organised crime play a powerful role in shaping political systems, markets, and everyday forms of insecurity and violence. From the illegal trafficking of drugs, weapons, people and counterfeit goods, to flows of illicit finance and cybercrime, this course explores the social, economic, political, and environmental impacts of global illicit economies.We ask, how do illicit economies impact on armed conflict and peacebuilding? In what ways do illicit economies shape the way that states and markets function? What are the everyday realities and experiences of people working in illicit economies and living in areas affected by organised crime? What kinds of policies and programmes have been implemented to address illicit economies, and with what effects? Addressing these questions, this course explores the theory, policy and practice surrounding illicit economies. It encourages students to question the sharp distinctions that are often constructed between legal/illegal economies, states/criminality, and violence/order and to understand how illicit economies provide a powerful vantage point for rethinking how states and markets function. The course will introduce students to key concepts and debates surrounding the relationship between illicit economies, conflict, and development. Students will have the opportunity to assess different approaches to illicit economies and how they have been applied around the world, from a range of perspectives including international policymakers, national governments, marginalised communities, and people whose livelihoods depend on illicit economies.

This unit aims to:

• Provide students with the analytical tools and empirical knowledge to tackle key real-world challenges in relation to illicit economies, conflict, and development
• Critically engage with different theoretical approaches to illicit economies and their relationship to conflict, peacebuilding, and development
• Provide a comprehensive understanding of policy and practice surrounding illicit economies
• Assess how current policies designed to tackle illicit economies impact on marginalised populations and consider the challenges surrounding efforts to design and implement more pro-poor approaches aligned with the sustainable development goals 
• Enable students to engage in critical discussion and debate on illicit economies through applying theoretical concepts and analysing case studies from around the world

Lectures and seminars

The course will be taught through a weekly two-hour lecture and a weekly one-hour seminar.

Seminar presentations

Students will all make one seminar presentation during the course. These seminar presentations will be allocated to students at the beginning of the course.

• Develop a critical understanding of diverse theoretical approaches to illicit economies and how illicit economies intersect with other policy fields, including conflict and peacebuilding, development, and public health  
• Understand policy interventions designed to target illicit economies through detailed case studies from around the world
• Understand and assess key challenges facing societies affected by illicit economies and organised crime

• Critically engage with current literature and policy debates on illicit economies from across a range of disciplines
• Apply key concepts and theoretical approaches to a range of real-world examples of interventions designed to tackle illicit economies 
• Develop analytical tools and case study knowledge to evaluate a range of approaches to illicit economies, including approaches that treat illicit activities as a criminal and security issue and approaches that treat them as a development, peacebuilding and public health challenge

• Demonstrate analytical and debating skills with peers and tutors
• Evaluate a range of viewpoints and distil key arguments and debates 
• Develop in-depth case study knowledge through independent research and use of library, electronic and online resources

• Develop effective communication skills to articulate concepts and ideas clearly and concisely verbally and in writing
• Synthesise and organise a wide range of material from various sources and critically evaluate its significance
• Developed written and verbal skills to communicate with a variety of audiences

Assessment Task	Formative or Summative	Length	Weighting
Seminar Presentation	Formative	10 minute presentation	0%
Policy brief	Summative	1500 words	30%
Essay	Summative	2000 words	70%

Assessment Task	Feedback Method
Presentation	Verbal Feedback
Policy brief	In writing within 15 days
Essay	In writing within 15 days

Alimi, D. (2019). An Agenda in-the-making: The Linking of Drugs and Development Discourses. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 1(1): 37–51. 

Bewley-Taylor, David. 1999. The United States and international drug control, 1909 - 1997. London and New York: Wellington House. 

Baker, J., & Milne, S. (2015). Dirty money states: Illicit economies and the state in Southeast Asia. Critical Asian Studies, 47(2), 151-176. 

Ballvé, T. (2019). Narco‐frontiers: A spatial framework for drug‐fuelled accumulation. Journal of agrarian change, 19(2), 211-224. 

Barnes, N. (2017). Criminal politics: An integrated approach to the study of organized crime, politics, and violence. Perspectives on Politics, 15(4), 967-987. 

Bhatia, J. (2021). Unsettling the peace? The role of illicit economies in peace processes. International Journal of Drug Policy, 89, 103046. 

Blok, A. (1974). The mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860–1960: A study of violent peasant entrepreneurs. Basil Blackwell. 

Bourgois, P. (2003). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press. 

Bourgois, P. (2018) Decolonising drug studies in an era of predatory accumulation, Third World Quarterly, 39:2, 385-398 

Carrier, N. and Klantschnig, G. 2012. Africa and the War on Drugs, Zed Books. 

Dávalos, L.M. & P. Gootenberg (Eds.), The Origins of Cocaine. Colonization and Failed Development in the Amazon Andes (pp. 1–18). Routledge. 

Das, V., & Poole, D. (2004). Anthropology in the Margins of the State. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 30(1), 140-144. 

Ghiabi, Maziyar. 2020. "Under the bridge in Tehran: Addiction, poverty and capital." Ethnography 21, no. 2: 151-175. 

Goodhand, Jonathan. 2008. ‘Corrupting or Consolidating the Peace? The Drugs Economy and Post-conflict Peacebuilding in Afghanistan’, International Peacekeeping, 15(3), pp. 405–423. 

Goodhand, J., Meehan, P., Bhatia, J., Ghiabi, M., & Sanín, F. G. (2021). Critical policy frontiers: The drugs-development-peacebuilding trilemma. International Journal of Drug Policy, 89, 103115. 

Gutiérrez-Sanín, F., & Gutiérrez, J. A. (2022). State, Political Power and Criminality in Civil War: An Editorial Revisiting Old debates From Different angles. Journal of Political Power, 15(1), 1-13. 

Hanieh, A. (2018). Money, markets, and monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the political economy of the contemporary Middle East (Vol. 4). Cambridge University Press. 

Heyman, J. (1999). States and illegal practices. London: Berg. Hudson, R. (2020). The illegal, the illicit and new geographies of uneven development. Territory, Politics, Governance, 8(2), 161-176.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development. (2022). Special Issue: Illicities - City-Making and Organized Crime Lessing, B. (2021). Conceptualizing criminal governance. Perspectives on politics, 19(3), 854-873. 

McCoy, A.W., 2003. The politics of heroin: CIA complicity in the global drug trade, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America. Chicago Review Press Chicago. 

Meehan, Patrick. (2021). Precarity, poverty and poppy: Encountering development in the uplands of Shan State, Myanmar. International Journal of Drug Policy, 89, 103064.

Meehan, P., & Dan, S. L. (2022). Brokered Rule: Militias, Drugs, and Borderland Governance in the Myanmar-China Borderlands. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1-23.

Menocal, A. R. (2022). Incorporating Serious Organised Crime (SOC) into elite bargains and political settlements analysis: Why it matters to understand prospects for more peaceful, open and inclusive politics. SOC ACE Research Paper No. 15. Birmingham. 

Ocakli, F., & Scotch, M. (2017). Oil-Fueled insurgencies: Lootable wealth and political order in Syria, Iraq, and Nigeria. Journal of Glob