Anthropology of Sustainability and Development

2024/2025

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

5

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

Department of Sociology

Course type:

Elective course

When:

4 year, 1, 2 module

Course Syllabus

Abstract

Anthropology of Sustainability is based upon a complex of disciplines and aims at understanding of how to gain a balance between resource extractions, industrial developments, environmental stability, and local social and cultural resilience. In a theoretical mind, it is hard to distinguish Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, and Philosophy if we are to gain an effectively working frame to understand sustainability and, furthermore, to implement some practical decisions to gain sustainability and wellbeing in a certain environmental, cultural and economical context. Anthropology of Sustainability takes off general anthropological perspectives and narrows down to specific eco-political cases and local idioms existing in the condition of global trends such as climate change and market economy. In this module we shall discuss main approaches to Anthropology of sustainable development and see how it is connected with environmental anthropology, political ecology, and various approaches to nature and landscape. A special focus will be given to the issues of aboriginal rights, traditional ecological knowledge and land use. We shall consider cases around the globe; yet, we shall focus more prominently upon Russian Arctic and Sub-Arctic territories. We shall also look at how industrial development and resource extractions constitute a special social spaces and hierarchies facing new challenges. For instance, shift work model is a successful tool for gaining capital for a mining company; yet, it produces a serious problem of family asymmetry which unavoidably brings problems for responsible parenthood a domestic time balancing. Similar examples will be addressed to the context of indigenous peoples and recent developments such as digitalization and new economic conditions.

Learning Objectives

• Gain familiarity with interdisciplinary nature of social and environmental change within different social and cultural settings.
• Look through the theories and concepts of anthropology of sustainability and development and understand how they can be applied to the post-2015 development policy.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Gain skills to apply them to work with different databases on sustainability and development issues.
• Acquire capacity to assess obtained data, methods and evidence critically, and understand the contributions and limits of different types of knowledge production.
• Gain knowledge on how to set out arguments and viewpoints effectively and coherently, orally and in writing
• Acquire capacity to work with specific case (to make a choice of their own) and be able to draw up an expert evaluation of specific cases
• The students gain knowledge on how to set out arguments and viewpoints effectively and coherently, orally and in writing.

Course Contents

• Lecture 1. Introduction: From Environment to the Environment and Landscape
• Lecture 2. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Sacred Economy and Aboriginal rights
• Lecture 3. Contemporary factors of sustainability and appropriation of resources: migration, gender asymmetry (female flight, temporary work) digitalization.
• Lecture 4. Methods of Anthropology of Sustainable Development.

Assessment Elements

• Reading
• Lecture and seminar attendance
• Project work

Interim Assessment

• 2024/2025 2nd module
  0,1 Seminar Attendance+ 0,3 Reading+0,6 Project

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Anthropology and development : culture, morality and politics in a globalised world, Crewe, E., 2013

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Key debates in anthropology, , 1996

Authors

• Ильина Мария Ивановна