Anthropology of the Environment

This reading seminar offers a critical introduction to the anthropology of the environment: the study of how human societies live with and transform the more-than-human world, and of how "nature" and "the environment" come to be defined, valued, and contested. It pursues these questions through political ecology — an interdisciplinary framework reaching across anthropology, geography, the environmental humanities, and other critical social sciences, which places political economy at the centre of environmental analysis: it holds that nature and society are never separate domains but are mutually produced, shaped by history and by relations of power across an unequal world. Drawing on empirical and ethnographic work from the global South and North alike, and through the close, collective reading of foundational and contemporary texts, seminar participants learn to bring this framework, and its ethnographic sensitivity, to bear on concrete environmental questions.

The seminar prepares students to engage thoughtfully with key debates in environmental theory and practice while cultivating advanced skills in critical reading, analytical discussion, and interdisciplinary research.

This course is conducted as a participatory seminar centered on close reading and critical discussion. We will collaboratively analyze theoretical texts and ethnographic materials through guided discussion. Learning activities emphasize comparative analysis of environmental paradigms across different contexts, with students developing skills in textual interpretation, conceptual framing, and critical debate through active engagement with course materials and peers. The seminar engages a diverse range of materials including ethnographic accounts, theoretical texts, primary documents, and audiovisual material.

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

See Virtual University

Course notes

• Université virtuelle
• Syllabus

Contacts

omar.jabary@ulb.be

Campus

Solbosch

Method(s) of evaluation

• Project
• Oral presentation
• Group work
• Other

Project

Oral presentation

Group work

Other

Language(s) of evaluation

• english
• (if applicable french )