Socio-environmental Dynamics

This course offers students an introduction to the ideologies, actors, and discourses of socio-environmental politics, enabling them to address the complexity of socio-environmental issues. Drawing in particular on political environmental theory and environmental sociology, theories of environmental democracy, public policy studies, and environmental justice, this course will equip students with the theoretical and conceptual tools necessary to develop a critical understanding of current socio-environmental issues. By the end of the semester, students will be able to:  i) contextualize and define various concepts drawn from political environmental  heory; ii) understand the specific political issues highlighted by different schools of thought, as well as their contradictions and complementarities;  iii) critically analyze the actors and discourses of institutional and non-institutional environmental actors; iv) apply these theoretical and conceptual tools to concrete situations and issues arising from current socio-environmental events

 

Be able to analyse socio-environmental problems reflectively and critically.

Understand the differences between approaches, their disagreements and incompatibilities around the main debates in the field. 

Reflect on socio-environmental issues in an inter and transdisciplinary fashion. 

Be able to understand complex theoretical texts. 
 

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

Please note that the course will be in English. A basic understanding of the interactions between environment-society relationships may be helpful to follow the course. 
 

The course is composed of lectures that will be participatory to the extent possible, considering the number of students attending. 

Each lesson is completed by a mandatory reading or podcast, which, together with the complementary readings, will be made available as the course progresses. 

The lectures cover the theoretical aspects. Each lecture is completed by a case study, which might presented by a guest lecture, pre-recorded or might constitute the object of the reading. 

 

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

Mandatory readings will be made available before each lesson as the course progresses.

Indicative references


Carter, N. (2018). The politics of the environment: Ideas, activism, policy. Cambridge University Press. 

Eckersley, R. (2020). Ecological democracy and the rise and decline of liberal democracy: looking back, looking forward. Environmental politics, 29(2), 214-234.

Heywood, A. (2017). Political Ideologies: An Introduction, Red Globe Press. (Chapter 9 Ecologism)

Fraser, N. (2021). Climates of capital for a trans-environmental eco-socialism. New Left Review, (127), 94-127.

Mitchell, T. (2009). Carbon democracy, Economy and Society, 38:3, 399-432. 

Pickering, J., Bäckstrand, K., & Schlosberg, D. (2020). Between environmental and ecological democracy: theory and practice at the democracy-environment nexus. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 22(1), 1-15.

Plumwood, V. (1995). Has democracy failed ecology? An ecofeminist perspective. Environmental Politics, 4(4), 134-168.

Schlosberg, D. (2013). Theorising environmental justice: the expanding sphere of a discourse, Environmental Politics, 22:1, 37-55.

Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Depoliticized environments: The end of nature, climate change and the post-political condition. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 69, 253-274.

Course notes

• Université virtuelle

Additional information

All used material (ppt, videos, etc.) will be made available to the students as the course progresses.

Contacts

louise.knops@ulb.be

Campus

Solbosch

Method(s) of evaluation

• written examination
• Other

written examination

Other

The written exam will be composed of five to six questions (defining concepts, commenting on examples, synthesising the work of an author or an approach, establishing links between different approaches, etc.). 

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

Language(s) of evaluation

• english