Political Ecology

Course Details

Course Content

This course invites students to explore how Political Ecology is used to understand processes of natural resource management, use, and contestations around these. Participants in this course will be challenged to re-think and reconsider mainstream understandings of environmental problems and how they are produced.

The course is primarily (but not exclusively) concerned with and draws its examples and cases of sustainability issues and struggles in low-income countries in the Global South. Cases cover forests, agricultural lands, water, wildlife and range lands.

The course is structured around an opening and closing week and three conceptually driven modules each lasting two weeks. The three modules are briefly described below. During the course you will be presented with critiques of much of mainstream practice in development and environmental sustainability policy. In the last week of the course, we will engage with what alternatives to the mainstream could look like.

Recommended Academic Qualifications

No special academic qualifications are required. Some experience in reading social science academic literature is an advantage. Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree is recommended.