Course Overview

This course provides an overview of social science approaches to environmental issues.  As a required course for the environmental studies major, the course takes both a thematic and problem-based approach to the study of interactions between human society and the environment.  Students in the course will learn to integrate concepts from the social sciences (anthropology, economics, geography, psychology, political science, sociology, and history) in interdisciplinary analyses of environmental issues.  An ecosystems approach, informed by ideas from the field of political ecology, create a framework for understanding the manner in which human societies utilize natural resources our attempts to provision ourselves through the economy and organize the social systems that shape our interactions with each other.  The environmental consequences resulting from the way in which resources are utilized shape the contemporary discourses to sustainability that are problematized throughout the course, and readings will focus on topics such as human-environment interactions, water and air pollution, climate change, mining, forests, food and agriculture, biodiversity, and environmental justice.