Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An examination of environmental issues in their social context. Environmental issues are on the leading edge of contemporary public concern and public policy debates. This course will examine such issues as the relationship between social organization and mode of subsistence, the politics of hunger, and the way in which human societies in their particular social, historical, and cultural contexts view and interact with the natural world.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course examines environmental issues in their social context. We will explore the
intersections between the environment and the social structures, relationships, and institutions.
The threat of planetary environmental collapse makes it imperative that we engage ourselves in
critical thinking and look at the relationship between humans and the environment in a new way.
We will investigate the connections between various environmental and social problems, as well
as numerous political ideologies, philosophies, and movements that have continually redefined
how we think of nature and the environment. In the first part of this course, we will aim to
develop a theoretical understanding of how individuals, communities, and societies relate to and
interact with nature and the environment across time and space. We will discuss the various
epistemological positions (such as realism and constructivism) to conceptualize human-nature
relationships. We will focus on the importance of ecological thinking for social theory. In the
second part, we will discuss issues of science and technology, urbanization, biodiversity,
conservation, sustainable development, race-class-gender relations as well as environmentalsocial
movements in order to reach a broad understanding of environmental issues. These issues
are on the leading edge of contemporary public concern and public policy debates. We will
examine how societies have been both producing and responding to those problems and how our
relationships with nature and the environment are mediated through power geometries and
already existing inequalities.
A primary goal of this course is for students to develop a better understanding of the
environment and society. The course intends to assist you in shaping your personal responses to
the environmental problems affecting your lives and your communities and encourage you to
think critically, analytically, and creatively about ecological processes and problems
contemporary societies experience. Since personal responses to the environmental problems are
necessary but never enough, this course also aims to provoke you to envision societal responses
and solutions to environmental crises in Canada and around the globe.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: