Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An exploration of our political, social, and economic systems, their ecological limitations, and related questions of inequality. It explores the histories, dynamics, logics, effects, and limitations of these systems. The evolution and effects of capitalism, specifically with respect to nonhuman natures, will be a focus.

COURSE DETAILS:

Course details
This course digs into the politics and production of capitalist natures: the forms and functions that nonhuman nature takes within capitalist social relations. By necessity, this also involves investigating colonial natures and colonial and capitalist structures like private property, the modern state, and law. Through what logics and processes have these structures shaped nature and human-nature relations? Are these structures inclined towards ecological emaciation? What kinds of natures have these structures produced historically and in the present? Who benefits from and who bears the costs of the dramatic ecological changes engendered through colonial and capitalist processes like extraction, enclosure and commodification? Are there patterns here along lines of race, class, gender, species and other socially constructed axes of difference?

Towards grounded answers to these questions, the course has two threads operating in relation to each other. First, all students will undertake a term-long primary research project (solo or in small groups) selected from a list of possible topics, including but not limited to studies of how the state assesses and justifies major extractive projects (how are impacts to endangered species assessed and by whom, what/whose knowledge is centred in environmental assessments); and what benefits extractive projects produce and for whom, and how these benefits compare to what was predicted in the assessment process. Second, as a class we will engage in in-depth readings and seminar discussion of key texts on the relationship between capitalism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and nature and ecological crises. These readings will shed light on the relationship between abstracted difference (along lines of race, gender, species), political economic structures like capitalism and colonialism, and the more-than-human – especially its historical and contemporary decimation and depletion. Guest lectures and a course podcast will provide additional context for the readings and research that students will undertake.

Course component	Synchronous/asynchronous
Lectures	Asynchronous (podcast) and synchronous (guest lectures) but recorded
Seminar discussion and workshops (for research projects)	Synchronous but recorded with ability to make-up participation/attendance marks

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: