Environmental Issues and their Social Context

Examines current environmental problems and commonly proposed political reforms; industrial, domestic and rural environmental technologies, asking what impact the widespread introduction of these technologies might have on society; debates about indigenous environmental knowledge and the social roots of environmental problems in developing countries; proposals for radical structural reform of society to deal with environmental problems; discusses tendencies within the environmental movement such as eco-feminism; deep ecology; social ecology; anarchist and socialist perspectives and environmentalism as a social movement. Field trips will be used to develop understanding of the social context of environmental issues.