SOSGEO2302 ¨C Environment and Society

Course content

What are the social, economic, political and cultural processes that are driving the climate and biodiversity crisis and influencing responses? How can we understand the relationship between individual change, collective change and system change? And what is the role of worldviews and discourses, culture, social organization, power, inequality and globalization in these processes?

Throughout this course, we will explore different ways to view environmental issues, human-environment relationships and their social dimensions. Key concepts, theories and debates about environmental problems will be presented. The issue of climate change will be a focal point for examining different perspectives on drivers and responses of contemporary environmental change.

?As part of this course, students will take on a self-chosen 30-day experiment of personal behavior change. Examples of earlier challenge include reducing meat consumption, spending more time in nature, or limiting use of plastics. Students will use this challenge, as well as writing exercises in and between the seminars, as an entry point to reflect on relations between their own lives and larger social structures, as well as the role of individuals in addressing environmental change.

Learning outcome

Knowledge

• Understanding key concepts, theories and debates about environmental problems, including causes and responsibility, impacts and vulnerability, resilience, adaption, human security and energy justice
• Be familiar with different social drivers of environmental problems, such as globalization, culture, social organization, the role of capitalism and different features of modernity. Discuss the significance and relations between different drivers
• Explain the role that discourses, beliefs, worldviews and emotions play in framing problems and solutions
• Understand how contributions from the social sciences can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of environmental problems and solutions

Skills and competence

• Experience with relating individual experiences to larger social forces, activating the sociological and geographical imagination
• Improved ability to read, engage with and discuss scientific literature about climate change and environmental degradation
• Critically engaging with different perspectives and approaches to environmental problems, and experience with presenting and defending viewpoints among a group of students

Admission to the course

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for?in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about?admission requirements and procedures.

Overlapping courses