Environment and Society (212-0-20)

Instructors

Rebecca Ewert
Dr. Rebecca Ewert is an Instructional Professor in the Sociology department. Her teaching and research interests include gender — especially masculinity — inequality, culture, mental health, environmental disasters, and qualitative methods. She received her BA from the University of California, Davis and her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.

Meeting Info

Lutkin Hall: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Our climate is rapidly changing. Rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity, higher temperatures, more droughts, melting glaciers, wilder weather patterns, and mounting environmental disasters mean that climate change is increasingly visible in our daily lives. What role does human society play in these changes, and what consequences does society suffer as these changes occur? This course is an introduction to environmental sociology during which we will employ an intersectional, sociological perspective to look beyond the scientific basis for environmental problems to understand the social roots of environmental issues. We will cover a variety of topics in environmental sociology, including how actors such as corporations, the media, and social movements impact public opinion around environmental issues. Further, we will critically examine the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic production of disparate environmental risks. A primary, central focus of this sociology course is environmental inequality, and students engage with a wide range of theories to examine environmental issues of their own choosing. This is not a public policy course.
This course is taught with ENVR_POL 212-0-20

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

Course-Specific Goals:
1) Apply a sociological perspective to environmental issues,
2) Engage with scholarship describing the historical and contemporary structures, processes, and relationships that shape Western perspectives on the environment
3) Understand and define concepts used in rhetorical analyses of social problem construction (i.e. claims, warrants, and evidence). Conduct a rhetorical analysis of environmental claims made in a documentary film.
4) Define, understand, critique, and apply key analytical concepts including environmental justice, environmental inequality, and environmental racism,
5) Examine the causes and consequences of, and potential solutions to, environmental issues, as they relate to human society,
6) Critically examine the socioeconomic production of disparate environmental risks,
7) Understand how individuals and communities mobilize in resistance to environmental inequality. Produce an essay furthering an original argument about a contested environmental issue utilizing ethnographic field notes and scholarly sources.

Academic Development Goals:
• Effectively communicate with classmates and instructors in a respectful manner conducive of learning and collaboration.
• Engage in critical, analytical thinking and writing. This means that you will develop the ability to make an argumentative claim, support the claim with reasonable evidence, and provide a strong conclusion while acknowledging the argument's limitations - all in your own authorial voice.
• Identify components of academic argument.

Teaching Method

Lecture

Evaluation Method

participation, writing assignments, take-home midterm paper, final research paper

Class Materials (Required)

All materials for this course will be made available on Canvas - no purchase necessary.

Class Notes

There will be a required field trip for the course that will take place at the end of the quarter. Students will use data collected on their field trip to complete their final paper.

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity
Social & Behavioral Sciences Distro Area

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Pre-registration is reserved for Sociology Majors and Minors.