• header Image

Social and Political Ecology

Home/ Social and Political Ecology
Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Foundation Core SHE2ED104 4

COURSE DESCRIPTION

As environmentalism has gained momentum in the last four decades, the idea of nature as an apolitical entity has come into question. It is in this context that the field or perspective of social and political ecology has made its presence felt across the disciplines. The course builds on the understanding that nature and society are intricately linked, and therefore environmental issues are simultaneously technical, social and political.

This course will build the conceptual-theoretical base for a political ecological perspective on concerns around nature/society and analyse politics and movements related to the knowledge, control and governance of nature.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  • To build a social science perspective on the environment.
  • To introduce the intellectual history and key debates in cultural ecology and political ecology.
  • To develop capacities for critical thinking, reading and writing.

COURSE CONTENT

S. No.

Units
  1.  

Introduction and Overview of Debates
  1.  

Cultural Ecology and Critique
  1.  

Political Ecology
  1.  

Governmentality, Technoscience and Nature

 

INDICATIVE READING LIST

  •  
  • A. Jalais (2008), ‘Unmasking the cosmopolitan tiger’, Nature and Culture 3(1): 25-40.
  • L. Mehta (2003), ‘Contexts and Constructions of Water Scarcity’, Economic and Political Weekly 38(48): 5066-5072.
  • P. Robbins (2001), ‘Tracking Invasive Land Covers in India, or Why Our Landscapes Have Never Been Modern’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91 (4): 637- 659.
  • S. Whatmore (1998), ‘Wild(er)ness: Reconfiguring the Geographies of Wildlife, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23(4): 435-454.
  • R. Hardin (2011), ‘Concessionary Politics: Property, Patronage, and Political Rivalry in Cen- tral African Forest Management’, Current Anthropology 52(S3): 113-125.
  • A. Chhatre and V. Saberwal (2005), ‘Political Incentives for Biodiversity Conservation’, Con- servation Biology 19(2): 310-317.
  • J. Fairhead and M. Leach (1995), ‘False Forest History Complicit Social Analysis: Rethinking Some West African Environmental Narratives’, World Development 23(6): 1023-1035.
  • C. Kull (2000), ‘Deforestation, Erosion and Fire: Degradation Myths in the Environmental History of Madagascar’, Environment and History 6: 423-450.
  • Julian Steward, ‘Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution’
  • R. Rappaport (1967), ‘Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among a New Guinea People’, Ethnology 6(1): 17-30.
  • Marvin Harris, ‘The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cow’
  • E.B. Ross (1978), ‘Food Taboos, Diet and Hunting Strategy: The Adaptation to Animals in Amazon Cultural Ecology’, Current Anthropology 19(1): 1-36.
  • Anna Tsing (1999), ’Becoming a tribal elder and Other Green Development Fantasies’
  • M. Watts (1984), ’Hazards and Crisis’, Antipode 15(1): 24-34.
  • T. Bassett (1988), ’The Political Ecology of the Peasant Herder Conflict in the NorthernIvory Coast’, Annals of The Association of American Geographers.
  • J. Scott (1998), ’Seeing like a State’, ch 1 and 8.
  • J. Ribot (1993), ‘Forestry Policy and Charcoal Production in Senegal’, Energy Policy, May 1993.
  • P. Robbins (2000), ‘The Practical Politics of Knowing: State Environmental Knowledge and Local Political Economy’, Economic Geography 76(2): 126-144.
  • J. O’Connor (1994), ‘Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?’.
  • J. Whitehead (2003), ‘Space, Place and Primitive Accumulation in Narmada Valley and Beyond’, EPW 38(40): 4224-4230.
  • M. Arsel (2012), ‘Between “Marx and Markets?” The State, The “Left Turn” and Nature in Ecuador’, Journal of Economic and Social Geography, 103(2): 150-163.
  • B. Mansfield (2004), ‘Neoliberalism in the Oceans: “rationalization”, property rights, and the commons question’, Geoforum, 35: 313-326.
  • D. Davis (2006), ‘Neoliberalism, environmentalism, an agricultural restructuring in Morocco’, The Geographical Journal, 172(2): 88-105.
  • M. Lawhon et al (2013), ‘Provincializing Urban Political Ecology: Towards a Situated UPE through African Urbanism’, Antipode
  • M. Watts (2010), ‘Resource Curse? Governmentality, Oil and Power in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’, Geopolitics 9(1): 50-80.
  • J. Ribot (2010), ‘Vulnerability does not fall from the sky’, in R. Mearns ed.
  • Timothy Mitchell, ‘Can the Mosquito Speak?’, from Rule of Experts
  • B. Latour, ‘The Pasteurization of France’, ch 2 and 3.
  • A. Agrawal (2005), Environmentality, ch 1 and 6
  • A. Petryna (2004), ‘Biological Citizenship’: the Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations’, Osiris 19: 250-265.
  • K. Fortun (2004), ‘From Bhopal to the Informating of Environmentalism: Risk Communication in Historical Perspective’, Osiris 19: 283-296.
  • V. Adams (2002), ‘Randomized controlled crime: Postcolonial sciences in alternative medicine research’, Social Science of Science 32(5-6).
  • I. Abraham (1997), ‘Science and Secrecy in Making of Postcolonial State’, EPW 32(33- 34).

ASSESSMENT

Assessment

Weightage

Memo Writing

30%

Take Home Essay

30%

End term paper

40%

 

Top