Environmental Ethnography

The current era - often called the Anthropocene - is characterised by pandemics, climate change and extreme weather events, environmental degradation, extinction of species and decrease in biodiversity. The boundaries between nature and culture are increasingly being called into question. This course investigates how contemporary environmental concerns have a long history and are the result of the interplay between culture, politics, economics, technology and ecology. Understanding and managing such complex problems, therefore, requires scientific knowledge about how ecosystems work. But it also demands knowledge about how cultural notions, social norms, economic values, and political interests shape people's relations to organic and non-organic nature. The course explores fundamental issues about meaning, value and action in relations between societies and environments. It provides ethnographic perspectives on some of the environmental challenges facing human societies and ecosystems, how different people deal with them in different ways, and how the humanities and social sciences can critically engage with these challenges.