Sustainability: Politics and Knowledge

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Sustainability has become a major challenge for contemporary societies. Far from being a sectoral problem, climate change, biodiversity, environmental justice and, in general, the creation of society-nature relationships that allow the maintenance, expansion and quality of life of different beings and ecosystems, have become a challenge that crosses and mixes political, ethical and technological spheres. This course will address sustainability as a multidimensional and interdisciplinary phenomenon, while presenting the specific contribution that sociology makes to this debate. To the extent that the challenge of sustainability is inseparable from the way in which society produces knowledge, inhabits territories, understands nature, manages resources and prioritizes values, the course will seek to articulate a question about sustainability that puts sociology in conversation. with other disciplines and knowledge. The course also tries to reflect situated on sustainability, placing Chile and the region at the center of the debate. This is done by connecting international literature with local challenges, as well as introducing authors and theoretical bodies that have emerged from Latin America to address the issue of sustainability. Conceived as a space for debate, the course will be structured based on lectures, applied work, open debates and guest presentations. The final objective is not only to show the complexity of sustainability as a concept and objective, but also to reflect on the imperatives that emerge together with sociology to face sustainability from theory, public policies and activism.