Class Objectives
/Class Outline |
[Course Description]
Environmental Anthropology explores the complex relationships between human societies and their environments. Using anthropological theories, methods, and case studies, students examine topics such as ecological disruption, conservation, governmentality, more-than-human cosmopolitics, toxicity, and environmental justice. Each week focuses on a major theme in environmental anthropology, drawing from diverse readings and online resources. Lectures provide context and clarify key concepts, while student-led discussions encourage active engagement. Designed for advanced graduate students, particularly those researching environmental conservation and knowledge practices, this course introduces interdisciplinary approaches from political ecology and environmental anthropology to analyze the political, economic, material, and social forces shaping environmental degradation and transformation in uncertain times.
[Expected Outcome]
- Gain a comprehensive understanding the field of environmental anthropology, recognizing their theoretical and methodological strengths and limitations within socio-historical contexts.
- Critically analyze and articulate key debates at the intersection of environmental anthropology, political ecology, multispecies ethnography, and more-than-human geography, linking theoretical discussions to assess ecological precariousness and ecological challenges within historical, geographical, and cultural frameworks.
- Develop and present thoughtful critiques and reflections on class topics and peers’ analyses.
- Examine the complexities of urban environments, interspecies labor, biotic materiality, sociopolitical processes of resource depletion, multispecies justice, environmental governance, and local and Indigenous responses to pollution and toxicity in the Anthropocene (or Capitalocene).
- Analyze the socio-political and historical processes that shape environmental racism, focusing on the concept of intersectionality.
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| Class Schedule |
Week 1 Course Introduction
Topics include, but are not limited to, the following: the Course Outline, Requirements, and Expectations; the Fundamental Philosophical Orientations in the Environmental Anthropology.
Vaughn, Sarah E., Bridget Guarasci, and Amelia Moore. 2021. “Intersectional Ecologies: Reimagining Anthropology and Environment.” Annual Review of Anthropology 50: 275–90.
Week 2 Governmentality and Conservation
This week critically examines how conservation initiatives govern both environments and the people who live with them. Drawing on the concept of governmentality, we explore how conservation programs shape local practices, subjectivities, and responsibilities in the name of environmental protection.
Agrawal, Arun. 2005.“Environmentality: Community, Intimate Government, and the Making of Environmental Subjects in Kumaon, India.” Current Anthropology 46 (2): 161-190.
Aini, John, West, Paige, Amepou, Yolarnie, Piskaut, Michael Ladi, Gasot, Cornelius, James, Rachel S., Roberts, Jason Steadman, Nason, Patrick, and Brachey, Anna Elyse. 2023. "Reimagining Conservation Practice: Indigenous Self-Determination and Collaboration in Papua New Guinea." Oryx 57 (3): 350-359.
Week 3 Nature, Culture, and Power
This week explores how the categories of “nature” and “culture” are shaped by social relations and power. Strathern’s analysis of the Hagen case challenges the assumption that nature and culture are universal or clearly separable domains. Building on this critique, the introduction to Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference examines how ideas about nature have been historically entangled with race, colonialism, and political struggles over land, resources, and belonging.
Strathern, Marilyn. 1981. “No Nature, No Culture: The Hagen Case.” In Nature, Culture, and Gender, edited by Marilyn Strathern and C. MacCormack, 174–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moore, Donald S., Anand Pandian, and Jake Kosek. 2003. “Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nature.” In Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek, and Anand Pandian, eds. Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. pp. 1-70.
Week 4 Extractivism, Dispossession and Violence
This week examines how resource extraction reshapes landscapes and social relations, often producing forms of dispossession and environmental harm. We explore how mining and other extractive industries generate uneven social and ecological consequences, particularly for Indigenous and local communities. The readings also consider how environmental discourses can be mobilized to obscure or legitimize political violence and ongoing forms of colonial dispossession.
Jacka, Jerry K. 2018.“The Anthropology of Mining: The Social and Environmental Impacts of Resource Extraction in the Mineral Age.” Annual Review of Anthropology 47: 61-77.
Hughes, Sara Salazar, Velednitsky, Stepha, & Green, Amelia Arden. 2022. "Greenwashing in Palestine/Israel: Settler Colonialism and Environmental Injustice in the Age of Climate Catastrophe." Environment and Planning E 6(1): 495-513.
Week 5 Toxic Worlding
This week explores how people live with and make sense of pervasive pollution in contemporary environments. Rather than treating toxicity as an exceptional condition, the readings examine how toxic substances become embedded in everyday life, bodies, and ecosystems. We also consider how communities, activists, and researchers respond politically and ethically to living in a world where pollution is often ongoing and unevenly distributed.
Nading, Alex M. 2020. "Living in a Toxic World." Annual Review of Anthropology 49: 209-224.
Liboiron, Max, Manuel Tironi, and Nerea Calvillo. 2018.“Toxic Politics: Acting in a Permanently Polluted World.” Social Studies of Science 48 (3): 331-349.
Week 6 More-than-human Cosmopolitics
This week explores how environmental politics extend beyond human actors to include animals, materials, and other more-than-human beings. The readings examine how multispecies relationships complicate conventional boundaries between life and nonlife and raise new questions about justice, responsibility, and coexistence in shared worlds.
De Wolff, Kim. 2017. “Plastic Naturecultures: Multispecies Ethnography and the Dangers of Separating
Living from Nonliving Bodies.” Body & Society 23 (3): 23-47.
Govindrajan, Radhika. 2022. "Spectral Justice." In The Promise of Multispecies Justice, ed. Sophia Chao, Karen Bolender, and Eban Kirksey, 186–205. Durham: Duke University Press.
Week 7 Infrastructure and Environmental Justice
This week examines how infrastructures, from legal systems to large-scale material networks, shape environmental governance and political power. The readings explore how infrastructures organize space, time, and access to resources, often reproducing colonial relations and environmental inequalities while also becoming sites of contestation and political struggle.
Cowen, Deborah. 2023. "Law as Infrastructure of Colonial Space: Sketches from Turtle Island," AJIL Unbound 117: 5-10.
Appel, Hannah, Nikhil Anand, and Akhil Gupta. 2018.“Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure.” In The Promise of Infrastructure, edited by Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel, 1-38. Durham: Duke University Press.
Week 8 Ecologies of Migration and Race
We will discuss how migration, race, and ecology intersect in shaping landscapes and political imaginaries. The readings explore how ecological metaphors and biological frameworks have been used to police borders, define belonging, and structure racialized forms of exclusion, while also reconsidering how urban and ecological spaces are reshaped through movement and encounter.
Stoetzer, Bettina. 2018. “Ruderal Ecologies: Rethinking Nature, Migration, and the Urban Landscape in Berlin.” Cultural Anthropology 33 (2): 295-323.
Shinozuka, Jeannie N. and Rohan Deb Roy. 2024. “White Ants: Biotic Borders to Biocultural Frontiers.” Isis 115 (1): 131-135.
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