ENV 759a/ANTH 581a () / 2023-2024

Power, Knowledge, and the Environment: Social Science

Credits: 3 Fall 2023: M, 1:00-3:50, Kroon 321

Introductory graduate course on the social science of contemporary environmental and natural resource challenges, paying special attention to issues involving power and knowledge. Section I, overview of the course. Section II, disasters and environmental perturbation: pandemics, and the social dimensions of disaster. Section III, power and politics: river restoration in Nepal; the conceptual boundaries of resource systems, and the political ecology of water in Mumbai. Section IV, methods: the dynamics of working within development projects; and a multi-sited study of irrigation in Egypt. Section V, local communities: representing the poor, development discourse, and indigenous peoples and knowledge. The goal of the course is to develop analytic distance from current conservation and development debates and discourse. This is a core course for MEM students in YSE, and a core course in the combined YSE/Anthropology degree program.  Enrollment is capped. The course is a “foundations” course for the M.E.M. curriculum, a required course in the curriculum for the joint YSE;/Anthropology doctoral program, and a prerequisite for some advanced YSE courses.