Spring 2018 Topics Course Descriptions
ENVS 3030-001 Topics in Environmental Social Sciences: Environmental Governance
Instructor: Cassandra Brooks
E-mail: Cassandra.brooks@colorado.edu
Consumption, overexploitation, and the resulting environmental degradation threaten the long-term vitality of the resources upon which human societies depend. Yet, based on hundreds of case studies, we know that human communities have the capacity to conserve, avoiding a “tragedy of the commons.” In this course, students will be trained to think critically about how, when, and why human communities succeed in sustainably managing their natural resources. We will take a social-ecological systems approach, studying both the human interaction and the conditions of the natural resource that make them more or less vulnerable to overexploitation. This course will cover the suite of approaches to governing natural resources, including public regulation, market-based incentives, and community-based resource management. We will further explore the influence of local communities, states, industry, media, science, and non-governmental organizations in driving environmental outcomes. Throughout the class we will study exemplary environmental governance case studies from local (e.g., management successes in Boulder) to global (e.g. the challenge of internationally managing the remote reaches of Antarctica). This course will incorporate lecture, in-depth discussion, group work, influential literature, film, guest speakers, and class projects to help students understand environmental problems and solutions, as well their personal role in governing natural resources across scales.
Fulfills the Intermediate Social Science requirement.
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ENVS 4100-002 Special Topics in Environmental Studies - Sustainable Communities Instructor: Brian Muller
E-mail: brian.h.muller@colorado.edu
This seminar is a collaboration between Boulder County, the city of Boulder and the University of Colorado Boulder. It is led by Susie Strife and Jonathan Koen, sustainability managers for the city of Boulder and Boulder County, and Brian Muller, ENVD faculty. Its purpose is help students learn about practical problems of sustainability at a local level, the process of decision-making about sustainability issues, and the roles of local government and non-profit staff in development of policy and management of sustainability programs. Students come away understanding the various roles that community stakeholders, residents, the private sector and governmental organizations play in making sustainability a reality within the community. Class topics address practical questions that are currently under discussion in this region. For example, should Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) be used on public lands? How should communities be prepared for the effects of climate change? Students read and present in class about these topics, interview local sustainability practitioners and community leaders, and prepare case studies about problems and best practices. Students then choose a local sustainability issue and research various stakeholder views. Based on the results of their research, students make policy and programmatic recommendations to local decision-makers
Applies to the Specialization Requirement.
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ENVS 4800–001 Capstone: Critical Thinking in Environmental Studies: Risk and Resilience
Instructor: Lisa Dilling
E-mail: Lisa.Dilling@colorado.edu
Responding and adapting to risk is a fundamental trait of human societies. Yet there is not universal agreement about the nature of environmental risks or what is to be done about them. Science, values and politics all play a role in the determination of policy or collective decision making about what risks we should pay attention to and how we set in place the rules about how we deal with risk.
Whether deciding how much mercury is allowed in the fish we eat, what kinds of pesticides can be sold and used, or whether people can build houses in the flood plain, our lives are governed by individual and collective decisions about risks. This course will examine the concept of risk, from technical and non-technical perspectives, and trace how environmental risks have been described, debated and adjudicated in environmental policy making. Case studies to be looked at will be partially determined by the interests of the class, and will include cases from local to global policy. By way of looking at the consequences of past decisions to manage risk, we will also examine the companion concept of building resilience.
Classwork will include discussion and exercises, decision making models, field trips (as possible), guest speakers, group work, writing, research, presentations, and a final paper. As a capstone class, this class will draw upon the combination of skills, knowledge and approaches students have engaged in their time at CU and apply experience with critical thinking and reasoning to risk management and decision making.
Fulfills the Capstone Course Requirement. Note: Capstone courses no longer may be repeated for credit.
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ENVS 4800-003: Capstone: Critical Thinking in Environmental Studies - Resilience in Complex Systems
Instructor: Carrie Vodehnal
Email: Carrie.Vodehnal@colorado.edu
The term resilience is currently being applied across a wide array of disciplines to refer to a quality that characterizes complex systems. In this course, we will explore this concept from a theoretical standpoint and examine ways it is applied in practice. From its history within ecology to its more recent application to social-ecological systems, we will work to disambiguate uses of the term; identify indicators of resilience and regime shifts, including the context-specific nature of these indicators; understand how resilience relates to concepts like sustainability and conservation; and evaluate limitations of current methods used to assess resilience.
Class meetings will incorporate readings, discussions, lectures, hands-on activities, and presentations. Students will apply critical thinking skills to the current literature and applications within the environmental context to develop a final research project. The research project will entail writing a substantial paper that you present to your peers.
Fulfills the Capstone Course Requirement. Note: Capstone courses no longer may be repeated for credit.
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GEOG 4742-001 Topics in Environment and Society – Food
Instructor: Kaitlin Fertaly
E-mail: Kaitlin.Fertaly@Colorado.EDU
Audrey Richards, the great British anthropologist, once pointed out that the need to eat is the most basic and important of all human drives. We need food more frequently and more urgently than we need even sex. The central place of food in our lives has made food one of the major foci of human existence. How we grow, process, distribute, and consume our food often defines us as a society. In our society, the food system has become the target of enormous critique in the last ten years, and also enormous innovation. How does what we eat define us? What does it mean to eat food made in factories and advertised on television, or to seek out "fresh," local or organic food? How do we use food to define ourselves as men and women, as Americans or Chinese or Pakistanis, as children or adults? What does it mean to eat too much, or too little, and how does it define us as social beings? These are the key questions we'll be asking in this course.
Human beings often organize societies around food production. By hiring or enslaving others to produce food, members of one social group exert power over other groups. Human beings from one culture are connected to people in far away places and vastly different cultures because they trade food with them: for example, Americans are connected to people all over the world through the export of Coca-Cola. People cement our social connections to one another by exchanging food, as Americans do at Thanksgiving dinner, or Polynesians do at a ritual pig roast. And food is one of the most deeply symbolic of all substances. The French or the Italians define their nationality partially through their cuisine, for example, so that to "be Italian" is to eat pasta. Lovers symbolize the sweetness of their affections by giving one another chocolate, and Christians symbolize their relationship to their Savior by consuming bread and wine.
In this course, we are going to study two broad elements of food. The first is the political economy of food. We will look at food as a commodity, and study where it comes from, how it connects members of different societies and social groups as it travels along the commodity chain, and how it creates social and geopolitical inequalities. We will also study food as culture, including the symbolic meanings of different foods in various world cultures, the role of food in defining gender, national identity, and social class. We'll look at fatness and thinness, the relationship between food and healing, and the role of food in transnational culture.
Counts toward the specialization requirement.