The course explores the interdisciplinary field of Political Ecology. Political Ecology is a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of socio-ecological systems that focuses on conflict, power relationships and the unequal distribution of environmental costs and benefits. It seeks to “politicize” debates about environmental problems, and stands in contrast to apolitical ecologies that explain environmental issues in terms of universal, biophysical, or human-behavioural drivers.
Each session of this course will focus on a different key concept of political ecology, and use a case-study article to illustrate how this concept is “put to work” in a real case.
Sessions will follow a seminar format with a combination of teaching by the instructor and discussion in class of assigned readings. For each session students will read two articles. Typically one of them will be theoretical, presenting the main concept to be discussed in that session, and the second will include a case-study.
Students are expected to write short commentaries on the text in advance. A group of two students will be responsible for synthesizing the commentaries of the week at the beginning of the class. A discussion of the key ideas of the articles will take place under the facilitation of the instructor. This might also include discussion in small groups, games, use of audiovisual material, etc.