This module is not currently running in 2022 to 2023.
This module seeks to critically and dynamically explore the diverse, complex, dynamic, recursive and multi-scalar nature of human-environmental interactions, including associated knowledge and practices. By engaging with recent debates and case studies from different regions it seeks to critically assess, compare and contrast some of the key contemporary, at times controversial, debates that engage collaborators, colleagues and critics from diverse academic specialties and perspectives. Through the use of lectures, class discussions and student-led seminar discussions on specific papers it seeks to review and compare some of concepts and approaches used to research, analyse and theorise the material, symbolic, historical, political dimensions of human-plant and human-environment relations. It also seeks to assess how such an understanding can better guide our attempts to address the complex socio-environmental problems facing our world and our future, , particularly in the context of the cascading planetary crises signalled by such concepts as the Anthropocene and in a way that considers the interplay between local, supra-local and planetary-scale processes and scales.
Total contact hours: 36
Private study hours: 114
Total study hours: 150
Core module for MA/MSc Environmental Anthropology and MSc Ethnobotany, optional module for MA Social Anthropology and associated other pathways within SAC, including DICE. Also available as an Elective Module.
Essay (3000 words) (70%)
Class audio-visual presentation (30%).
Reassessment methods: 100% coursework.
Reading list (Indicative list, current at time of publication. Reading lists will be published annually)
Agrawal, A. 2003. Sustainable governance of common-pool resources: context, methods, and politics. Annual Review of Anthropology 32: 243-62.
Alexiades, M. N. (ed.) 2009. Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives. Oxford: Berghahn.
Anderson, D.G. and E. Berglund (eds.) 2003. Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege. London: Routledge.
Berkes, F. et al. (eds.) Navigating social-ecological systems: building resilience for complexity and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greenberg, J.B. et al. (eds.) Reimagining political ecology. Durham: Duke University Press.
Heckler, S. (ed.) Landscape, process and power: re-evaluating traditional environmental knowledge. New York: Berghahn Books.
The intended subject specific learning outcomes. On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1) understand some key contemporary issues regarding the study of human-environment and human-plant interactions, framing these in the context of the evolution and development within the relevant fields
2) critically analyse and debate the broader theoretical, social, political and ethical issues surrounding the human-environment nexus and planetary crises, with a particular focus on questions relating to complexity, multi-dimensionality, dynamism and in a way which considers the relative merits and limitations of reductionist, holistic, relational and multi-scalar perspectives.
3) use key recent books and peer-reviewed articles to provide the most up-to-date perspectives on contemporary issues in ethnobotany and environmental anthropology from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives within the natural and social sciences and humanities.
4) demonstrate knowledge of key case studies from around the world that illustrate some of the challenges and difficulties- epistemological, methodological, institutional, normative and ethical- of carrying out research in ways that assist the process of transition towards a sustainable future
5) incorporate these perspectives as they plan and complete their own independent research projects at various field locations, leaving the MSc program with a working knowledge of the current debates, approaches and controversies in the multidisciplinary study of human-environment relations
The intended generic learning outcomes. On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1) demonstrate general learning and study skills
2) think critically and engage with a broad range of ideas and approaches from across the humanities and natural and social sciences, thus helping develop some the skills and outlook necessary to work in inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary settings in ways that are aligned with the kind of work needed to carry out to address the global challenges unfolding today
3) present their ideas systematically and cogently both orally and in writing
4) use (and combine effectively) written, oral and visual modes of communication
5) work effectively within a small group and improve not only their written, but also oral communication skills and use of multi-media
6) read, comprehend and assimilate scholarly texts from a wide range of disciplines across the humanities and sciences
7) develop a reasoned, evidence-based argument that is careful, measured and cognisant of its own limitations and problems; that is, an ability to apply a constructively critical mind to one's own work
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