Human Ecology: Political Ecology, Crisis and Identity

<p>This course examines ecological crises through the lenses of political ecology, culture, and identity. You explore how power, inequality and meaning shape how crises are understood, experienced, and responded to across different social and geographic contexts.</p><p>The course offers an advanced exploration of ecological crises at the intersection of political ecology, political economy, culture, and identity. You are presented with different theoretical perspectives and empirical cases from around the world.</p><p>You work with key topics such as denial, authoritarianism, climate justice, greenwashing and relations between nature and society, using them to analyse how crises emerge, are felt, reproduced, and intensified.</p><p>The course places significant emphasis on the psychological and affective dimensions of ecological crises, particularly the climate crisis. It combines feminist, anti-racist and psychoanalytical perspectives on ecology and climate with radical political economy and critical theory. You will examine how the denial of the climate crisis is produced and organised at various social and political scales.</p><p>You learn to read literary texts with ecocritical methods and analyse various moments of the ecological crisis with instruments from disciplines such as environmental philosophy and environmental sociology. Another central theme is how the climate crisis is addressed through the deployment of various technologies, notably carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering. <br/><br/> course is included in the Master of Science Programme in Human Ecology - Culture, Power and Sustainability, and is also offered as a freestanding course. </p>