ANTH 522

Ecology, Politics and Culture

This course examines the relations between ecology, economic system, culture, ideology and power relations. The focus moves back and forth between theoretical synthesis and case studies. The case studies are both ethnographic and historical. A few of the themes treated in detail: the role of religious ritual in regulating certain environments; the mutual influences of ecology and political economy in the making of "the Third World"; the local and global politics of national parks; combined and uneven development. Stress is laid on political ecology as a complex, shifting, analytical framework. Questions of sustainability weave in and out of the proceedings. Also emphasized: the story of ecological analysis over the last seventy years is a story about changing relations between anthropology and other social sciences

Units: 3.0