Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science: Political Ecology and Sustainability

<p>The course introduces the interdisciplinary field of political ecology as an approach to understand and analyse the interactions between social and environmental change.</p><p>The course focuses on the ‘political’ character of sustainability issues. It is an overview of theoretical concepts, debates and methodological approaches in current political ecology research.</p><p>You gain theoretical building blocks you can draw on for your thesis work, and later apply in future work, for instance, teaching, research, journalism, environmental and development work.</p><h3>Four key themes</h3><p>Introduction to political ecology: Focus on the emergence and development of political ecology as an analytical approach.</p><p>Power and social difference in local-global relations: Introduces feminist political ecology and intersectionality to examine how power rooted in class, gender, race, and ethnicity shapes the environment and natural resource use.</p><p>Environmental narratives and representations: Critical examinations of ecological narratives and representations of ‘nature’. How are particular sustainability challenges typically represented, and who has the power to influence problem framings? How and why have certain narratives on environmental degradation and change emerged and persisted?</p><p>Ecology and materiality in political ecology: We explore the various ways in which political ecology scholarship engages with the biophysical and material dimensions of environmental processes, and how these dimensions shape how problems are portrayed.</p>