Content (Syllabus outline):

Today we live in a world that is often apprehended in various discourses and practises as being in a state of acute crisis, which is referred to in different media and academic debates as a world of polycrises. In recent decades, the latter has been increasingly associated with environmental and climate changes, which, according to numerous studies, are accelerating and having ever greater consequences – both socially and geophysically. What does this mean for individuals and society? How and in what ways are such accelerated environmental and climatic processes lived, experienced and sensed in everyday lives of both humans and nonhumans? What does it mean that today these planetary issues are often either understood as environmental and social “crises” and/or “challenges” or taken as potential gaps for various economic, political and other ways of environmental management? What can this tell us about contemporary society and its understanding of time and place?

To answer these questions this course will draw on some classic anthropological texts as well as contemporary debates in environmental anthropology:

• Human-environment interrelations
• Place, landscape, environment
• Anthropology of water and rivers
• Anthropology of infrastructure and extraction policies
• Environmental and climate changes
• Anthropocene
• Multispecies
• Biodiversity, conservation and preservation processes
• Knowledge and knowledge-making practices
• Environmental activism and new (old/traditional) ways of collective commoning
• Gender and ecofeminism
• Sustainability and tourism
• Interdisciplinary research

Readings

• Barnes, Jessica, and Michael R Dove, eds. 2015. Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change. Yale University Press.
  https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300198812.001.0001.
• Brightman, Marc, and Jerome Lewis. 2017. The Anthropology of Sustainability: Beyond Development and Progress. Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• De la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures 2011. Durham: Duke University Press.
• De la Cadena, Marisol and Mario Blaser, eds. 2018. A World of Many Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2017. “The Politics of Climate Change Is More Than the Politics of Capitalism.” Theory, Culture & Society 34 (2–3): 25–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417690236.
• Crate, Susan A, and Mark Nuttall, eds. 2016. Anthropology and Climate Change. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315434773.
• Descola, Philippe, and Marshall Sahlins. 2014. Beyond Nature and Culture. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Paperback edition. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226145006.001.0001.
• Elixhauser, Sophie, Zofia Boni, Nataša Gregorič Bon, Urša Kanjir, Alexandra Meyer, Frank Muttenzer, Mareike Pampus, and Zdenka Sokolíčková. 2024. “Interdisciplinary, but How? Anthropological Perspectives from Collaborative Research on Climate and Environmental Change.” Environmental Science & Policy 151 (January): 103586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103586.
• Escobar, Arturo. 1996. “Construction Nature.” Futures 28 (4): 325–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-3287(96)00011-0.
• Escobar, Arturo. 2020. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Latin America in Translation (translated by David Frye). Durham: Duke University Press.
• Feld, Steven, and Keith H. Basso, eds. 1996. Senses of Place. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series. Santa Fe, N.M.
• Gregorič Bon, Nataša. 2021. “Kuçedra’s Waterways: Restoring Authority and Building Vitality.” In Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania, edited by Nataša Gregorič Bon and Smoki Musaraj, 131–62. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84091-4_6.
• Gregorič Bon, Nataša. 2022. “Changing Environments: Experiences and Knowledges,” Anthropological Notebooks 28 (3): 1-10. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.7463445.
• Haraway, Donna. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6 (1): 159–65. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934.
• Hastrup, Kirsten. 2013. “Anthropological Contributions to the Study of Climate: Past, Present, Future.” WIREs Climate Change 4 (4): 269–81. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.219.
• Henig, David, and Daniel M. Knight. 2023. “Polycrisis: Prompts for an Emerging Worldview.” Anthropology Today 39 (2): 3–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12793.
• Kirksey, S. Eben, and Stefan Helmreich. 2010. “The emergence of multispecies ethnography.” Cultural Anthropology 25 (4): 545–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01069.x.
• Knox, Hannah. 2020. Thinking like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Latour, Bruno. 2014. “Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene.” New Literary History 45 (1): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0003.
• Moore, Amelia. 2016. “Anthropocene Anthropology: Reconceptualizing Contemporary Global Change.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22 (1): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12332.
• Orlove, Benjamin S., and Stephen B. Brush. 1996. “Anthropology and the Conservation of Biodiversity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1): 329–52. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.329.
• Strang, Veronica. 2023. Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis. London: Reaktion Books.
• Tsing, Anna L., Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou. 2020. Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.21627/2020fa.
• Vaughn, Sarah E., Bridget Guarasci, and Amelia Moore. 2021. “Intersectional Ecologies: Reimagining Anthropology and Environment.” Annual Review of Anthropology 50 (1): 275–90. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-101819-110241

Objectives and competences:

The course delves into the human- environment interrelations that are not understood as monolithic processes which are linear and subject to dualistic conceptualisations. Rather, they are seen as a multiplicity of entanglements and ruptures between the human and the non-human, the material and the immaterial, the “natural” and infrastructural. We will discuss how these entanglements and disentanglements generate the meanings of what is today called “nature”, environment, landscape, climate, rivers, forests, sea, etc. in different societies and cultures. How are the human- environment interrelations perceived, made and remade, translated or transformed by different ways of knowledge and knowledge-making-practices? How they are approached or/and reshaped through different ways of caring, nurturing, idolising or neglecting, ignoring or even exploiting of what we call the realm of “nature”?

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Acquire the key concepts and theoretical premises of environmental anthropology that will help them to explore environmental issues in specific socio-cultural contexts;
• Analyse the multiplicity of interrelations between humans and environment, going beyond dualistic definitions;
• Critically reflect on and contextualise concepts of “nature”, environment, landscape, climate, biohabitats and other planetary processes in specific social and cultural, historical and political contexts;
• Acquire knowledge of contemporary anthropological and interdisciplinary methodologies in studying of environmental issues.

Intended learning outcomes:

Students are introduced to the key themes and concepts of environmental anthropology, which they reflect on using specific socio-cultural contexts that are either part of their general or their own research. They adopt the analytical skills to understand the interrelated processes and phenomena that they comprehend through planetary issues in a particular time and place. They learn critical thinking by questioning already established concepts about nature, the environment and other planetary processes; obtain research skills in contemporary anthropological and interdisciplinary methods for studying environmental issues; and develop communication skills to articulate complex ideas about the human- environment interrelations.

Learning and teaching methods:

Types of learning/teaching:

• Frontal teaching
• Work in smaller groups or pair work
• Independent students work
• e-learning

Teaching methods:

• Explanation
• Conversation/discussion/debate
• Work with texts
• Case studies

Assessment:

• Short written assignments 20 %
• Presentations 20 %
  Final examination (written/oral) 20 %.