Environmental Politics and Justice

3 credits · Undergraduate

Throughout history, humans have shaped the environment to provide food, shelter, energy, profit, and social power. As climate change advances, our relationship to nature is more complex than ever before. On the one hand, societies have an unprecedented capacity to reconfigure the environment through processes that range from genetic manipulation to geo-engineering. On the other hand, the unequal distribution of environmental problems across races, classes, genders, and nations is intensifying and demands critical interrogation. From farmer suicides in India to protests over hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and oil pipelines in North America, social movements are demanding more democratic control over land and natural resources. In this course, we will explore environmental justice in theory and practice. Drawing on geography, anthropology, history, and critical race studies, we will examine the following questions: What is nature? Who defines and controls it? Why do environmental inequalities arise and how are they maintained? How are groups resisting and organizing around environmental and climate justice concerns? [3]