New Course for Spring 2017 Anth 298: “Environmental Anthropology: Ecology, Politics, and Culture”

Instructor: Josh MacLeod

Monday, Wednesday 3:30-4:50pm

This course examines contemporary ecological issues from a social scientific perspective. In particular we will draw on interdisciplinary perspectives from political ecology to look at some of the most pressing environmental problems in the contemporary world, including: climate change, environmental justice, habitat destruction, biodiversity, food production and distribution, energy sources, and the nexus between capitalism, consumerism, and ecological crisis. A central theme of the course is to analyze and understand how these issues have been produced and reproduced through the interaction between human behavior and the natural environment. We will seek to put these issues in deep historical, political, and socio-cultural context in order to adequately understand the bounds of the problem and to begin to imagine and implement alternative ways of being in the world that would address these pressing concerns.