Environment, Cultural Politics & Justice

Students taking this course will examine how humans have recently altered the global environment in ways that have no precedent in human history or in geological time. With the contemporary environmental crisis as its backdrop, this course examines contemporary anthropological and social science approaches to the environment and environmentalism: governmentality, environmental history, cultural studies, and environmental justice. We will examine coastal and island community struggles in the context of today’s climate change and their responses to escalating climate and industrial disasters. We will also examine processes of climate denial that reflects inequalities of power between communities and corporations that underpin ruination in many global contexts.

A student who has completed the course is expected to have achieved the following learning outcomes, defined in terms of knowledge, skills, and general competence:

Knowledge

• Knowledge of anthropology's distinctive features and its classic perspectives on environment, cultural politics and justice
• Insight into central anthropological works and how they build on and differ from each other
• Insight into the interaction between academic theory development and societal processes.

Skills

• Basic understandings of the subject’s recent development
• Ability to critically reflect on subject texts in a constructive way
• Acquire skills in academic writing.

General competence

• Ability to critically assess professional perspectives, knowledge base and implications;
• Ability to question taken for granted values, behavior and habits, and thus better understand other modes and approaches to the climate crisis.

A combination of lectures and seminar discussion.