Unit name | Conflicted Environments: Studying environmental social movements from the grassroots |
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Unit code | GEOGM0036 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | M/7 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Maria Paula Escobar-Tello |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None, although GEOGM0028 recommended |
School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
Faculty | Faculty of Science |
This unit examines the relationships between violent conflict and natural resource landscapes, with particular attention to social justice concerns, gender and political ecology perspectives. Conceptually, the course functions to introduce students to the ideas that underpin political ecology and feminist political ecology – interdisciplinary areas of study that explore how political transformations and environmental transformations are critically connected. Contextually, we draw on contemporary work that interrogates how the machinery of development conservation move around the world and the effects they produce as they are woven into places already shaped by inequality, colonial histories, and power relation. In the cases we focus on we prioritise the experience of small-scale farmers (campesinos), indigenous groups, social and agricultural movements, and those dispossessed by war or politics – actors often overlooked in the history of social analysis. Cases we look at cover conflicts arising in relation to forestconservation, food security/sovereignty, indigenous rights and nature-knowledges, resource extractivism, anthropogenic climatic and biodiversity change, the rise of the military in conservation, and the ‘slow’ violence caused by toxic residues. Within seminars, practices and critiques will be drawn from contemporary work in areas including: concepts of indigeneity, environmental governance, agro-ecology, food security and food sovereignty, transnational social movements, anthropogenic climatic and bio-diversity change, and peace studies. Specific case-study analysis will include research in areas like: indigenous constitutional governance (ex. sumak kawsay and buen vivir); urban greening; transnational peasant movements; permaculture; seed sharing; indigenous mapping; decolonial and critical pedagogies; rural to urban transnational social movements; the rights of nature; political experiments in micro-geo-politics; indigenous methodologies; indigenous law; plant agencies; new approaches to the commons; etc.
Students completing the unit will have applied their theoretical and practical learning to the significant conceptual and concrete challenges of rethinking models of (neo-colonial) development in dialogue with new environmental challenges.
For teaching, the course is divided into two parts, (i) Political ecologies of conflicted environments in Latin America and (ii) Gender, environment and intersectional identities in the Global South.
At the completion of this unit, students will able to:
The unit will be taught through a blended combination of online and, if possible, in-person teaching, including
Formative: Each student will present in one seminar on that seminar's assigned readings for about ten minutes. Each presentation summarizes central themes in the reading for that week and poses issues for discussion. Feedback will be given to the students within one week of their presentation.
Summative: Participation and presentation (10%): In the final week of teaching, students present a poster or display that captures one theme they have been focusing on through the taught part of the course. Each student speaks to their dsisplay for 5-10 minutes. Studets receive a mark and written feedback on this presentation, as well as their participation in class through the term [ILOs 1-11]. One 4000-word essay (90%). Students may choose to examine either: an object or text through which engage key topics and concepts within the unit via a creative/productive means; or, examine a self-chosen topic on a subject of their interest arising from the unit. Guidance will be provided on an individual basis for each student, and students will be supported in their development of ideas and design of the research papers [ILOs 1-11].
Recommended Reading
Brosius, P. J., Tsing, A. L., &Zerner, C. (Eds.). (2005). Communities and 'Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-Based Natural Resource 'Management. Rowman Altamira.
Coletta, M., &Raftopoulos, M. (2016). Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America. University of London Press.
De Sousa Santos, B. 2014. Epistemologies of the South. Abingdon: Routledge.
Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. and A. Escobar. 2010. Globalisation and the Decolonial Option. Abingdon: Routledge.
Peluso, N. L., &Watts, M. (Eds.). (2001). Violent Environments. Cornell University Press.
Rocheleau, D., Thomas-Salyter, B., Wangari, E. (Eds). (1996) Feminist political ecology: Global Issues and Local experience. Routledge
Smith, L. T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: London: Zed Books and University of Otago Press.
Zerner, C. 2000. People, Plants, and Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation. Columbia University Press.'
There is no core text-book for this unit. Instead students will be required to read a selection of journal articles, book chapters and books as specified on the reading list circulated at the start of the course.