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Environmental Anthropology
Study Course Description
Course Description Statuss:Approved
Course Description Version:2.00
Study Course Accepted:02.02.2024 12:26:02
| Study Course Information | |||||||||
| Course Code: | KSK_242 | LQF level: | Level 7 | ||||||
| Credit Points: | 2.00 | ECTS: | 3.00 | ||||||
| Branch of Science: | Sociology; Social Anthropology | Target Audience: | Social Anthropology | ||||||
| Study Course Supervisor | |||||||||
| Course Supervisor: | Agnese Bankovska | ||||||||
| Study Course Implementer | |||||||||
| Structural Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences | ||||||||
| The Head of Structural Unit: | |||||||||
| Contacts: | Dzirciema street 16, Rīga, szf rsu[pnkts]lv | ||||||||
| Study Course Planning | |||||||||
| Full-Time - Semester No.1 | |||||||||
| Lectures (count) | 6 | Lecture Length (academic hours) | 2 | Total Contact Hours of Lectures | 12 | ||||
| Classes (count) | 6 | Class Length (academic hours) | 2 | Total Contact Hours of Classes | 12 | ||||
| Total Contact Hours | 24 | ||||||||
| Study course description | |||||||||
| Preliminary Knowledge: | Basic knowledge of anthropology. | ||||||||
| Objective: | The objective of the course is to enable students to observe, study and discuss the complex interactions between human communities intermingling with their natural environment. The current environmental crisis is generating lively debates about the role of human society in causing climate change, anthropogenic pressures and animal extinction. In this direction, environmental anthropology offers a useful tool for mapping such disputes, identifying both the different types of environmental experiences produced by human collectives and the political approaches mobilised in public debates on the state of the environment. | ||||||||
| Topic Layout (Full-Time) | |||||||||
| No. | Topic | Type of Implementation | Number | Venue | |||||
| 1 | Nature-Culture | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||||
| 2 | Human and Nature in Connected Worlds | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||||
| 3 | Cultural Perspectives on the Environment | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||||
| 4 | Creating the Environment in the Western World | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||||
| 5 | Environment as Policy | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||||
| 6 | Rethinking the Environment | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||||
| Assessment | |||||||||
| Unaided Work: | Students must study the required readings independently and prepare the required papers and oral presentations. Students prepare for seminars independently, visit the library and use available digital resources to prepare for face-to-face classes. The specific objectives are updated annually and described on the e-learning platform. To assess the overall quality of the study course, the student must complete the course evaluation questionnaire on the Student Portal. | ||||||||
| Assessment Criteria: | Active participation in classes. Written final paper. | ||||||||
| Final Examination (Full-Time): | Exam (Written) | ||||||||
| Final Examination (Part-Time): | |||||||||
| Learning Outcomes | |||||||||
| Knowledge: | Students will gain knowledge of the most important and up-to-date theories of environmental anthropology, get acquainted with the main concepts and topics in contemporary environmental anthropology, and learn the approaches of different theoretical schools. | ||||||||
| Skills: | Students acquire and deepen skills in analysing and comparing theoretical texts, as well as in presenting their views orally and in writing, drawing on both newly acquired theoretical knowledge and empirical observation. | ||||||||
| Competencies: | Ability to critically evaluate the theoretical and empirical material covered in the study course, use it to interpret and analyse other theoretical and empirical material, and apply it to practical problem solving and research. | ||||||||
| Bibliography | |||||||||
| No. | Reference | ||||||||
| Required Reading | |||||||||
| 1 | Visa literatūra ir angļu valodā un piemērota gan latviešu, gan angļu plūsmas studentiem | ||||||||
| 2 | Descola, Philippe. 2009. The two natures of Lévi-Strauss. In B. Wiseman (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss, 103-117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. | ||||||||
| 3 | Ingold, Tim. 2013. Dreaming of dragons: on the imagination of real life. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19: 734-752. | ||||||||
| 4 | Candea, Matei. 2010. “I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat: Engagement and detachment in human-animal relations. American Ethnologist 37(2): 241-258. | ||||||||
| 5 | Tsing, Anna L. 2018. Nine provocations for the study of domestication. In A.H. Swanson, M.E. Lien and G.B. Ween (Eds.). Domestication gone wild, 231-251. Durham: Duke University Press. | ||||||||
| 6 | Gibson, Diana. 2018. Towards plant-centred methodologies in anthropology. Anthropology Southern Africa 41(2): 92–103. | ||||||||
| 7 | Kirksey, S. Eben, and Stefan Helmreich. 2010. The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 25(4): 545–576. | ||||||||
| 8 | Freidberg, Susanne. 2003. ‘French Beans for the Masses: A Modern Historical Geography of Food in Burkina Faso’. Journal of Historical Geography 29 (3): 445–63. | ||||||||
| 9 | Calkins, Sandra. 2019. ‘Bananas, Humanitarian Biotech, and Human-Plant Histories in Uganda’. Medicine Anthropology Theory 6 (3): 29–53. | ||||||||
| 10 | Krenak, Ailton and Duarte, Andreia. 2021. Silence of the World: Scenic Experiment Script. TDR 65(4): 67-76. | ||||||||
| 11 | Meneley, Anne. 2021. ‘Eating Wild: Hosting the Food Heritage of Palestine’. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 44 (2): 207–222. | ||||||||
| 12 | Reis-Castro, Luisa. 2021. Becoming Without: Making Transgenic Mosquitoes and Disease Control in Brazil. Environmental Humanities 13(2): 323-347. | ||||||||
| 13 | Howard, Penny McCall. 2018. ‘The Anthropology of Human-Environment Relations: Materialism with and without Marxism’. Focaal 2018 (82): 64–79. | ||||||||
| Additional Reading | |||||||||
| 1 | Ortner, Sherry B. 1974. Is female to male as nature is to culture? In M.Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (Eds.). Woman, culture, and society, 68-87. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. | ||||||||
| 2 | Haraway, Donna. 2006. Encounters with Companion Species: Entangling Dogs, Baboons, Philosophers, and Biologists. Configurations 14(1/2): 97-114. | ||||||||
| 3 | Hartigan Jr, John. 2017. ‘How to Interview a Plant: Ethnography of Life Forms’. In Care of the Species: Races of Corn and the Science of Plant Biodiversity, 253–81. Minneapolis [et al.]: University of Minnesota Press. | ||||||||
| 4 | Harris, Marvin et al. 1966. The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle. Current Anthropology 7(1): 51-66 | ||||||||
| 5 | Prihandoko. Sanjatmiko. 2021. Multispecies ethnography: reciprocal interaction between residents and the environment in Segara Anakan, Indonesia. South East Asia Research 29(3): 384-400. | ||||||||
| 6 | Calkins, Sandra. 2021. ‘Toxic Remains: Infrastructural Failure in a Ugandan Molecular Biology Lab’. Social Studies of Science, April, 1-22. | ||||||||
