This course examines the discourses and practices of development and population control targeting non-western countries. The course situates these discourses and practices in histories of colonial encounters, international politics, and global relations of power and inequalities. We will survey a diverse range of debates among the critics of population and development policies and projects in order to see how such debates have succeeded or failed in altering hegemonic approaches to development with new approaches that attend to peoples' histories, social locations, and health and human rights. The course will analyze these discourses and practices with reference to local politics and realities of uneven development that produce gender, class, and ethnic disparities. Although the course material focuses on non-western countries, Africa in particular, we will also look at some examples of how these discourses are projected on poor communities elsewhere including the U.S. The course also aims at introducing students to the methodologies of doing research in the social sciences, for instance students will do group projects on the Darfur conflict, Western Sudan as a research topic for their final papers.