Course Overview

This course is an examination of the subfield of political ecology within geography. But the class also probes the broader politicization of nature through processes of environmental conservation, development, and struggles over landscapes and livelihoods. We will examine the political economic contexts of environmental transformations, as well as the ways in which our understandings of nature are materially and discursively bound up with notions of culture and identity, and how these are transformed in the context of political-economic change. The course does not attempt to present a comprehensive survey of the environmental geography literature. Rather, it is a critical exploration of theories and themes related to nature, political economy, and culture – themes that, to my mind, fundamentally underlie the relationship between society and environment. The course is divided into five sections: (1) “Foundations ” examines the intellectual foundations of political ecology as a subfield; (2) “Capitalist Transformations of Nature ” explores the ways in which capitalism continually transforms nature and our relationship with it; (3) “Neoliberalism and Environmental Governance ” continues the examination of capitalist transformations of nature, with a particular focus on the neoliberal form of capitalism, and the forms of environmental governance it engenders; (4) “The Politics of Epistemology: State Authority and Environmental Knowledge ” explores differing modes of knowing and classifying nature, and how this knowledge translates into state power; and (5) “Agrarian Questions ” begins with the classical Marxist debates about the peasantry, and then examines more recent discussions of peasant political ecologies and rural social movements