Final ENTITLE Syllabus Contract number: PITN---GA---2011---289374 Title: ENTITLE --- European Network of Political Ecology Report number: D.1.1 Partner responsible Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona Deliverable author Christos Zografos Deliverable editor Giorgos Kallis Delivery date January 2016 Dissemination level PUBLIC Abstract This report outlines the syllabus for a political ecology 12-week, post-graduate course based on the courses offered during the ENTITLE training project. The syllabus is designed both to adapt to the needs of a taught course and for self-study. It also includes an Annex with an expanded reading list in political ecology, put together by Prof Julian Bloomer with contributions from members of the PESO email list. This project benefited from EC funding under the Marie Curie Actions - Initial Training Networks - FP7 - PEOPLE - 2011; contract Nº 289374 - ENTITLE Table of Contents 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 2. Teaching instructions ................................................................................................................ 2 3. Outline of classes ......................................................................................................................... 3 Annex I: Expanded political ecology reading list .................................................................. 9 The views expressed in this document are of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. 1. Introduction This syllabus is the product of ENTITLE training events, specifically summer schools and special intensive courses (SIC) conducted within the ENTITLE FP7 Initial Training Network project, which trained 12 PhD and seven post-doctoral researchers in the field of political ecology. Between 2012-2016, ENTITLE offered six SIC (in Manchester, Barcelona, Rome, and Berlin) and three summer schools (in Syros, Lund, and Istanbul), with a duration that varied between four and six days per event. Lectures and public events during those courses were recorded, and together with other audio-visual material generated by the project are made freely available both in the project’s website (http://www.politicalecology.eu under the “Media” tab) and at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ROQZLIwFUl8i3BmUvQZ3g/featured. For the purposes of this document, we have selected only some of the topics that were taught during those courses because the objective of the syllabus is to provide a relatively concise, 12-class course on political ecology. This document is not meant to provide an exhaustive list of all topics covered by political ecology (for this, one can check relevant textbooks or collections, such as Robbins (2012), Perault et al. (2015), and Peet et al. (2010) that are listed among the syllabus references), but a series of classes on major topics that were covered with ENTITLE training and resources for completing those classes. This syllabus has been widely distributed through project partners, will be further distributed through an ENTITLE project stand in the upcoming ‘Undisciplined Environments’ ENTITLE international conference in Stockholm (20-24 March 2016), and is made available through the project’s website. At the end of the document, we have also added an Annex with an expanded reading list in political ecology, put together by Prof Julian Bloomer (Trinity College Dublin) through the PESO email list in political ecology with the assistance of that list’s coordinator Prof Josiah Heyman (University of Texas at El Paso) and the contribution of that list’s members who provided the information on the readings; a significant part of the expanded reading list comes from from Prof Simon Batterbury’s 2016 postgraduate course ‘Political Ecology of Development’ at the University of Melbourne. We greatly thank Professors Bloomer, Heyman and Batterbury for providing and accepting to include that list in this syllabus. The views expressed in this document are of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. 1 2. Teaching instructions Objectives This syllabus introduces students to the multi-disciplinary field of political ecology, which considers the relevance of power and politics for shaping the relationship between humans and their environments. After taking this course, students should be able to identify and explain ways in which power and politics influence the human- environment relationship, analyse themselves socio-environmental issues under the lenses of political ecology, and conduct empirical research that leads to such an analysis. Structure and content The course is broken down into three parts. The first part introduces students to the field and key concepts of political ecology, and sets out an analytical framework for conceptualising three main elements that are central to a political ecology understanding of human-environmental relations: society, nature and capitalism. The second part examines applications and variations of this framework upon different expressions of human-environment interactions. It considers the environmental implications of major economic activities (extractive industry, waste generation, etc.), the conflicts related to them and the ways in which power relations shape those conflicts and influence the capacity to both engage in conflict and create viable alternatives. The third part provides some tools for conducting and communicating political ecology research, and a final class that reflects on the role of political ecologists when engaging with policy and politics. Using the syllabus This syllabus can be used for either teaching a course in a conventional way, e.g. in a class, or for self-study. Its 12 classes could be taken either in the course of 12-weeks (typically an academic semester in many university curricula) or in more concentrated forms (such as in the course of four weeks with e.g. three classes per week). Taught courses could use the syllabus conventionally, by asking students to read the readings before class, then discuss the readings in class and use the videos (in the classroom) to highlight important points related to each class, in a process facilitated by an instructor. Self-study could follow the same process, i.e. first read the references for each class and then watch the videos to clarify key points, or invert this process, i.e. start with videos and explore more into depth the topic with text, depending on the inclination of students to better absorb audio-visual or written text – this is something that self-taught students could also experiment with at the beginning of the course, and may want to vary depending on the “communicability” of each lecture (video). For self-taught purposes, we would highly recommend that students try to form groups of collective self-study if possible. This could be operationalized by getting each student to read class readings first, then the group getting together to watch the video of the ENTITLE lecture and then hold a group discussion trying to clarify points to each other and reflect on what has been learned. If further questions arise that cannot be answered by the group after the end of each class, the group could try contacting (e.g. by email) academics relevant to their questions (e.g. identify them through the class readings) to ask for further references (textual or audio-visual) that could clarify points. The views expressed in this document are of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. 2 3. Outline of classes PART I: INTRODUCTION Class 1: What is political ecology? ENTITLE tutors: • Paul Robbins (Nelson Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) • Giorgos Kallis (Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) Readings: • Robbins, P. (2012). Political versus apolitical ecologies. Political ecology: A critical introduction (2nd edition), John Wiley & Sons, 11-24. • Peet, R., Robbins, P., & Watts, M. (2010). Global nature. Global political ecology, Routledge, 1-47. ENTITLE audio-visual class support material for the class: • ENTITLE scholars: What is political ecology? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLVE69QZt5w • Maria Kaika: Political ecology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5PRfxNUBao • Paul Robbins: The ecology in political ecology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1QkulKOZ4c • Thomas Perreault: Corrientes, colonialismos y contradicciones: Repensando los raices y trayectorias de la ecología política [Currents, colonialisms and contradictions: Rethinking the roots and trajectories of political ecology]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mfsC-wfAEY Class 2: Theorising nature-society-capitalism ENTITLE tutors: • Noel Castree (School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, UK) • Jason Moore (Sociology Department, Binghamton University SUNY, USA) Readings: • Castree, N. (1995). The nature of produced nature: materiality and knowledge construction in Marxism. Antipode 27, 12-48 • Moore, J. W. (2010). ‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century, Journal of Agrarian Change 10(2), 188– 227 ENTITLE audio-visual support material for the class: • Noel Castree: Theorising nature-society-capitalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30eEEEP_3OM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvIYPkL-klE • Jason Moore: The