Going Beyond the Bipolarity of the Cold War: Global History of the Non-Aligned Movement - Einzelansicht

A wave of recent studies sheds light on alternative spaces of globalization during the Cold War by focusing on postcolonial and socialist development cooperation. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) provides a concrete political and institutional framework in which political, economic, military and cultural exchange took place between the countries of the Global South as well as between “Second” and “Third World” countries. This seminar adopts a “bottom up” view of such exchanges, focusing on their human agency, or chief protagonists. Among these are communist technocrats, activists of national liberation movements, exchange students, engineers and workers in training programs, military staff, and others. Students will be encouraged to think about the impact of “other globalizers” and engage in critical discussion about the 20^th century globalization, about attempts to establish alliances inside the “developing world”. We will study examples of specific collaborations in different NAM member states, aimed at sparking knowledge transfer and modernization experiments and, more generally, at unlocking alternative potentials towards development. We will thus encounter ways of thinking and acting that went beyond the usual bipolar West-vs-East approach to the Cold War world, ways that often were rooted in anticolonial narratives of liberation.

Active class participation is expected. Further, students will give  in-class presentations and write a final research paper (the length is determined by the Studienordnung according to which the student studies) written on a topic chosen in agreement with the professor.

-        Mustapha Kamal Pasha, “The ‘Bandung Impulse’ and International Relations”, in Sanjay Seth (ed.), Postcolonial Theory and International Relations, A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2013), 144-166.

-        Natasa Miskovic, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Nada Boskovska, The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War. Delhi - Bandung – Belgrade, London: Routledge, 2014.

-        James Mark, et al. Alternative Globalizations. Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020.

-        Radina Vucetic & Paul Betts. Tito in Africa: Picturing Solidarity. Belgrade: Muzej Jugoslavije, 2017.

https://www.muzej-jugoslavije.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Tito-in-Africa.pdf