Credits: 5

Course time(s): every other year; online section every fall term

General Education: SSC (Social Sciences)

Catalog description: All human activity has consequences for the natural environment. The natural environment has also shaped the development of human civilization. Yet rarely is the natural world considered worthy of sociological study. This course will examine the ways humans interact with their natural environments, and examine some of the consequences of those interactions, mixing theory, history and example to look at energy use, resource consumption, population growth, technology, and politics.

Prerequisites: None, but Soc 205, or a natural science course, are recommended.

Course website: http://noegret.org/soc-370-environment-society

Most recent syllabi: F’22 (online); Sp’18 (on campus)

Textbooks used:

• Paul Hawken (ed). 2017. Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reduce global warming. NY: Penguin.
• Bill McKibben. 2011. Eaarth. NY: St. Martin’s.
• E.O. Wilson. 2003. The Future of Life. NY: Vintage
• Christian Parenti. 2012. Tropic of Chaos. NY: Nation Books.
• Elizabeth Kolbert. 2006. Field Notes from a Catastrophe. NY: Bloomsbury.
• Alan Weisman. 2007. The World without Us. NY: Picador.
• Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth Gould. 1994. Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict. New York: St. Martin’s Press
• Edward Abbey. 1968. Desert Solitaire. NY: McGraw-Hill.

General topics covered: humans and the environment, population, energy, ecology, global warming, environmental racism, environmental ethics, economic growth, technology

Learning outcomes

Upon completion students will demonstrate the capacity to:

1. analyze the ecological impacts of human social activity;
2. analyze the driving social forces behind environmental problems;
3. critically examine environmental advocacy groups and movements and identify corporate influence and propaganda;
4. apply a human ecological model to an organization or institution.By the time we’re finished, you’ll have a much more sophisticated understanding of how humans and their environments are connected, and how these connections have consequences for what we do now and what we’ll be able to do in the future as societies. Environment and society can only be separated in the most artificial ways. As activist Barry Commoner once said, ‘everything is connected to everything else.’://