Taught By:
Allison Caine
Assistant Professor
Anthropology
University of Wyoming
Read profile here.
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the key questions and debates in the diverse field of environmental anthropology. Environmental anthropology seeks to understand how humans define, engage with, and understand the world in which we live. Where do we draw the boundary between nature and culture, or between human and non-human? What does it mean to live well in the world? How is the environment implicated in issues of power, inequality, and justice? We compare human-environmental relations and environmental impacts across different societies and knowledge systems. The knowledge derived from these comparisons will then be applied to several in-depth case studies of contemporary environmental issues, which include such problems as: global climate change, food access and food sovereignty, resource extraction, consumption and waste, and pollution and toxic exposure.