Taught By:
Julia Cantzler
Professor & Chair, Sociology Department
University of San Diego
Course Description:
This course examines the powerful—but highly contested—concept of sustainability. This task is complicated by the fact that “sustainability” has come to mean so many things to so many different entities (from the World Bank, to environmentalists, to large corporations, to Indigenous communities), and has generated such a diverse body of academic literature, that it’s difficult to make sense of the term. We will navigate this complex landscape by critically examining multiple definitions and framings of sustainability, and applying these framings to specific case studies on climate change, energy, water, food, transportation, and waste, among others. Through these foci, we will investigate the relationships between various environmental and social problems, as well as the many political ideologies, philosophies, and movements that have continually redefined how we think of nature and sustainability – paying particular attention to how these social dynamics play out within the context of the USD campus community. We will also look at how the issues of economic and racial/ethnic inequality relate to sustainability, focusing on the distribution of wealth and the influence of historical and contemporary systems of racial/ethnic stratification as they pertain to access to resources between nations, and social groups within nations (including our local community). In this course, we will explore how understanding sustainability and creating a more sustainable world requires integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives. While a sociological perspective is essential to these tasks, so too are perspectives from the natural sciences, philosophy, history, business, engineering, and the arts, among others. This course will provide students with the opportunity to integrate knowledge from sociology and other academic disciplines into a comprehensive research project. Students will also take an applied approach to learning by using knowledge derived in this course to propose campus-based initiatives to address a pressing matter related to sustainability here at the University of San Diego.
