Climate and Society

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course examines the reciprocal relationship between climate and society. On one side, climate change and global heating are caused fundamentally by society—that is, by the social organization of economic and political activity over the past century. At the same time, climate change and global heating have profound implications for current and future societies around the world, as people move, adapt, innovate, and resist. In this seminar, we will consider what scholars have already discovered about climate-society relationships and ask new questions about how societies are changing in the midst of the current climate crisis. Based on research in sociology and other social sciences, we will consider questions like the following: How have societies in different places and times dealt with changes in their surrounding environments? How did so many modern societies become so dependent on fossil fuels, and why are some less dependent than others (even at similar levels of income)? What role have social movements, climate-forcing industries, political polarization, social marginalization (especially as related to race, ethnicity, class, and indigeneity), cultural understandings of the environment, emotions, and extreme weather events played in responses to—or denials of—climate change? How do communities respond to natural disasters? Under what conditions do they band together or fall apart? To what extent—and in what circumstances—has climate change contributed to civil conflict, mass displacement, and refugee crises? How is climate change shaping the future of work? How are bottom-up activism, monitoring, and “citizen science” being mobilized to address climate change, and how do they intertwine with experts and elites? What opportunities does the current climate crisis provide for rethinking relationships between economies, environments, polities, and societies? How have other kinds of environmental hazards been reduced, and what implications does this have for climate change? In addition to readings, seminar discussions, and in-class writing prompts (or other ways of checking in on the readings), the class will culminate in a project in which students design ways to communicate (or dialogue about) insights from the class to a broader audience.