SFS3840

This course aims to provide students with critical thinking tools to examine environmental problems and acknowledge that political circumstances are the foremost driver. This course will identify underlying conditions for many current and previous socio-environmental crises and the leading research-driven approaches in political ecology. Political ecology (PE) is not a discipline per se but an interdisciplinary field that enhances our understanding of complex environmental situations. Thus, PE is as complex as our relationship with nature.
Political ecology in recent years has become a relevant strategy to include politics in an apolitical context. Consequently, social and natural environment/conservation issues are brought together in a political context—conservation governance, protected areas, and community-based natural resource management. Moreover, it is a field of critical research. Political ecology research broadens the perspective of an environmental crisis/situation and focuses on the study of interdependence among political units and their environment. Therefore, this course will revisit concepts and debates about power inequality, production systems, knowledge, and discourse. PE focuses on how previous economic/political events influenced contemporary environmental crises. Additionally, this course will provide an overview of the most common methods in anthropology used by political ecologists. These methods will demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of political ecology and the capacity to draw upon other fields to address its research questions. By the end of this course, the students will be able to provide solid arguments for why the Andes-Amazon region is a political space. They will be able to identify political circumstances shaping the current landscape and internalize that conservation is a dynamic and complex system. Students will recognize that politics, within its distinct scales, is the primary driver of ecological transformations. This course will complement its content and learning objectives from other courses dictated during the semester, such as Tropical Ecology, Conservation Science, and Culture and Language.