{"c_title":"[941.696A] Political Ecology","c_info":"3 credits | Lecture\/Seminar | Doctoral | Dept. of Environmental Planning","c_summary":"This course aims to allow students to expand theoretical horizons to solve environmental problems based on their understanding of political ecology and diverse ecological discourses within the field. This course raises the following questions: What is the root cause of environmental problems? Who holds the ultimate power over the environment? How do existing policies and stakeholder interactions affect the use of environment by society? How do conflicts between conservation and development arise and become resolved? What role does social justice play in sustainability? How should society be reconfigured to increase ecological sustainability? The field of political ecology tries to understand the relationship society and the environment have had up until now, and is an interdisciplinary attempt to combine environmental science and social science in order to analyze the interaction occurring between a wide-variety of social organizations mediated by the environmental results of resource use and the dynamic relationship of society. As such, there are a wide-range of discourses that exist in the political ecology field. This course helps students to understand the mechanisms that trigger environmental destruction from local to global dimensions and provides instruction to figure out ways to solve them. This will be done by exploring diverse and complicated interlocking political, economic and social power relationships, which shape the relationship between human beings and nature, and diverse ecological discourses which provide a wide-variety of diagnoses and prescriptions for solving environmental problems. The first half of the course is dedicated to the introduction and understanding of the concept of political ecology and diverse ecological discourses, while the second half focuses on analysis and discussion on diverse environmental problems."}