Critical Environmental Politics

POLI70922 Critical Environmental Politics 15 Semester 2 Postgraduate Taught Level 6 Carl Death Unit coordinator Politics 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Masters/Integrated Masters P4 ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 7.5 Indicative course content:1.       Climate change in the Anthropocene2.       Global environmental governance3.       Conservation and biodiversity4.       Sustainable development5.       Environmental citizens and green consumers6.       Eco-feminist theories of change7.       Environmental security8.       Green parties and green states9.       Biopolitics and ‘green governmentality’10.    Limits to growth and steady state political economies This course will introduce students to the study of environmental politics in the contemporary world. It covers some of the most important challenges facing our societies, including climate change, biodiversity loss, unsustainable consumption and production patterns, and food and water insecurity. It also explores some of the concepts, frameworks and discourses that environmental theorists have used to understand and explain these issues, including political ecology, biopolitics, the anthropocene, sustainability, risk society, environmental security and others. The central challenges of the course will include exploring the relationship between society and nature in contemporary politics, and the role of individuals, communities, movements, NGOs, elites, corporations, political parties, states and international institutions in responding to the environmental crisis. On completion of this unit successful students will be able to demonstrate:<ol> <li> Understanding of the major approaches to the study of environmental politics</li> <li> Familiarity with a wide range of cases of environmental issues, and they will be able to apply theoretical approaches to those cases</li></ol>3. Understanding of the different drivers and responses to environmental degradation. The course will be taught on the basis of ten two-hour seminars. Seminars will be structured around student activities, involving group discussions of the set-reading, set-piece debates, and question and answer exchanges with colleagues, the tutor, and visiting speakers. Students will be required to deliver presentations on particular topics. The classes will also include some structured delivery of content and presentation of research findings or theoretical arguments by the tutor and visiting speakers. Small-group sessions will also be used in which students will be required to answer questions, debate problems, extrapolate from case studies, and analyse primary texts.The Blackboard site for the course will contain relevant links to further sources and websites. Seminar material will also be posted on the site. Video and online resources will be used in some classes as a basis for discussion and analysis.   0 Other 40% 2 Written assignment (inc essay) 60% <table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="94" width="496"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="width:338px;"> Book review</td> <td style="width:85px;"> 1000 words</td> <td style="width:47px;"> 20%</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width:338px;"> Coursework essay</td> <td style="width:85px;"> 3000 words</td> <td style="width:47px;"> 60%</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width:338px;"> Particiption including Learning Log</td> <td style="width:85px;"> 1000 words</td> <td style="width:47px;"> 20%</td> </tr> </tbody></table>  Y The course has been designed with the following text in mind: Carl Death (ed.) Critical Environmental Politics (Abingdon; Routledge, 2014).Supplementary texts include: W. M. Adams, Green Development: Environment and sustainability in a developing world, third edition, (Abingdon; Routledge, 2009).Arun Agrawal, Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects, (Durham, NC; Duke University Press, 2005).Andrew Barry, Political Machines (London; The Athlone Press, 2001).John Barry, The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human flourishing in a climate-changed, carbon-constrained world (Oxford: OUP, 2012).Simon Dalby, Security and Environmental Change, (Cambridge; Polity Press, 2009).John S. Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, (Oxford; OUP, 2005).Thom Kuehls, Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics, (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1996).Gabriela Kütting and Ronnie Lipschutz (eds) Environmental Governance: Power and knowledge in a local-global world (Abingdon: London, 2009).Timothy W. Luke, Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy and Culture, (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1997).Warren Magnusson and Karena Shaw (eds.) A Political Space: Reading the Global through Clayoquot Sound, (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 2003).W. Neil Adger and Andrew Jordan (eds) Governing Sustainability, (Cambridge; CUP, 2009).Peter Newell, Globalization and the environment: Capitalism, ecology and power (Cambridge; Polity, 2012).Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Climate Capitalism: Global warming and transformation of the global economy (Cambridge; CUP, 2010).Richard Peet, Paul Robbins and Michael J. Watts (eds) Global Political Ecology, (Abingdon; Routledge, 2011).Wolfgang Sachs, Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development, (London; Zed Books, 1999). Seminars 20 0 130 TimetableMonday 12.00 - 14.00