SOS220 Environmental Sociology

Contents and structure

What characterizes peoples’ relationship to the environment and the living world?

How do different people think and act in response to changes in their environmental surroundings?

How are extractive practices justified, and what forms of resistance exist? How are plants, animals, birds and fish known, and what sorts of relations beyond the human make local surroundings meaningful?

This course is an introduction to some of the central themes in environmental sociology as well as an exploration of some recent anthropological analyses of environmental change. Drawing on a range of ethnographic studies the course provides perspectives on topics such as: political ecology, extractivism, environmental injustice and challenges.

• How peoples’ understanding of the environment can be related to their sense of self, identity, and moral obligation
• How nature—animals, plants and landscapes—can become sites of contestation and conflict
• How environments can elicit different forms of knowledge
• How global inequality and colonial dispossession based on extractivism and dispossession are connected to climate change and biodiversity loss
• How does slow and sudden environmental crises affect how we think about the future and what it means to be human

Learning Outcome

Knowledge

After completing the course, students should have workable knowledge of

• Different approaches to environmental sociology
• Knowledge of sociological approaches to global environmental problems
• Sociological theory, specifically on environmental and climate challenges
• Knowledge of sociological and anthroplogical approaches to global environmental change
• Material and spatial factors shaping the environment, and how the environment changes over time
• Knowledges of how language practices and moral understandings shape our relations to nature
• How youth and youth identity are affected by globalization and environmental crises

General competence

After completing the course, students should be able to

• Write informative texts according to academic criteria, employing current theories and concepts in the Social Sciences
• Discuss important topics in an informed manner
• Develop rational, logical arguments
• Think critically, holistically, and long-term

Entry requirements

None

Teaching methods

Individual study, group work, exercises, written assignments (with comments from the lecturer or fellow students), study groups (initiated and run by students).

Compulsory learning activities

Digital story

Students will produce a digital story examined by the course leader. Those who do not pass will be given a second chance.

Assessment

Take home exam, 2 days

Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail.

read more about the Grading system

Examination support material

All

More about examination support material

Course reductions

• SA206 - Kultur, identitet og globale kriser - Reduction: 5 studypoints