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Course: Beyond Development – Multidimensional Alternatives to a System that Kills Us

10 Weeks
All levels
58 lessons
9 quizzes
10 students

This course highlights what today’s dominant narratives often conceal: the existence of a world of deeply enriching transformative processes across every region of our planet, encompassing both alternative paradigms and transformative practices. Bringing together internationally recognised scholars and activists, it introduces diverse alternatives emerging from feminist, decolonial, ecological, Indigenous, and grassroots perspectives. Topics include Buen Vivir, post-extractivism, degrowth, climate justice, care, and the commons. The course combines critical analysis with concrete experiences of social transformation from different world regions. Accessible and interdisciplinary, it invites participants to rethink progress, wellbeing, development and prosperity beyond endless economic growth. It is ideal for activists, students, educators, and anyone seeking hopeful and systemic responses to today’s ecological and social crises.

The course was designed by Miriam Lang and Elise Klein, with the collaboration of Nnimmo Bassey, Roland Ngam and Ashish Kothari, as part of the Global Working Group Beyond Development.

Curriculum

  • 11 Sections
  • 58 Lessons
  • 10 Weeks
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Miriam Lang

Miriam Lang is an academic activist. She works as full professor in the Department for Environment and Sustainability at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador. Since 2020, she has been coordinating the master’s in Political Ecology and Alternatives to Development. She holds a PhD in Sociology and a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the Free University of Berlin. She collaborates with the Latin American Permanent Working Group on Alternatives to Development which she co-founded in 2010, while being the head of office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for the Andean Region (2010-2015). Her research focuses on the critique of development, systemic alternatives and the territorial implementation of Buen Vivir and combines decolonial and feminist perspectives with political economy and political ecology. One of her last publications is the book The Geopolitics of Green Colonialism: Global Justice and Ecosocial Transitions, coedited with Mary Ann Manahan and Breno Bringel at Pluto Press, which has been translated to four languages. As a person from the Global North who decided to live in Latin America more than 20 years ago, Miriam is concerned with translating and weaving knowledges and experiences of transformation between different geoepistemic spaces. She collaborates with indigenous, anti-racist, internationalist and feminist movements and is also a co-founder of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South.