[C] = Callison, Candis. How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Duke University Press Books, 2014. ISBN: 9780822357872.
[CO] = Colborn,Theo, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers. Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? - A Scientific Detective Story. Plume, 1997. ISBN: 9780452274143.
[CR] = Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341.
[CRU] = Cruikshank, Julie. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. UBC Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780774811873.
[H] = Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780971757585.
[HE] = 
Hecht, Gabrielle. Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. MIT Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780262526869.
[L] = Langston, Nancy. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780300171372.
[M] = Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe. MIT Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780262027243. [Preview with Google Books]
[MU] = Murphy, Michelle. Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers. Duke University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780822336716. [Preview with Google Books]
[R] = Raffles, Hugh. Insectopedia. Vintage, 2011. ISBN: 9781400096961.
[S] = Sellers, Christopher C. Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science. University of North Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780807847985. [Preview with Google Books]
[W] = Walley, Christine J. Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park. Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780691115603. [Preview with Google Books]
[WI] = Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. Oxford University Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780195198102. [Preview with Google Books]
[WO] = Worster, Donald. Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521468343. [Preview with Google Books]
Note: Students are not responsible for reading "recommended readings"—these readings are merely FYI, for consideration for final papers or for future exploration.
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Introduction Tracking environmental conflict: How far will ideas of the "Anthropocene" take us? | No readings assigned |
| 2 | Histories and Ideas of Nature |
[CR] "Preface." [CR] Chapter 1: The View from Walden. [CR] Chapter 2: Landscape and Patchwork. [CR] Chapter 3: Seasons of Want and Plenty. [CRU] Chapter 2: Constructing Life Stories: Glaciers as Social Spaces. [WI] Chapter 1: Country and City. [WI] Chapter 2: A Problem of Perspective. [WI] Chapter 3: Pastoral and Counter-Pastoral. [WI] Chapter 10: Enclosures, Commons and Communities. [WO] Chapter 6: A Fallen World. [WO] Chapter 8: Scrambling for Place. [WO] Chapter 9: The Ascent of Man. Cronon, William, ed. "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature." In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. ISBN: 9780393315110. |
| 3 | Ecologies: Differing Understandings from Human Ecology, Cultural Ecology, Political Ecology, Postindustrial Ecology and Ecological Science Frameworks |
On Human EcologyJanowitz, Morris. "Introduction." In The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Edited by Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick D. McKenzie. University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780226646114. Park, Robert E. "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment." Chapter 1 in The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Edited by Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick D. McKenzie. University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780226646114. On Cultural EcologySteward, Julian. "The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology." Chapter 1 in The Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living. 2nd edition. Edited by Nora Haenn, Richard R. Wilk, and Allison Harnish. New York University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9781479876761. [Preview with Google Books] ———. "The Great Basin Shoshonean Indians: An Example of a Family Level of Sociocultural Integration." Chapter 6 in Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Edited by Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter. Wiley-Blackwell, 2007. ISBN: 9781405111379. On Ecological Sciences[WO] "Preface." [WO] Chapter 11: Clements and the Climax Community. On Political EcologyNeumann, R. P. "Political Ecology of Wildlife Conservation in the Mt. Meru Area of Northwest Tanzania." Land Degradation & Rehabilitation 3, no. 2 (1992): 85–98. Robbins, Paul. "The Hatchet and the Seed." Chapter 1 in Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 9781405102667. On Postindustrial EcologiesChelcea, Liviu. "Postindustrial Ecologies: Industrial Rubble, Nature and the Limits of Representation." Parcours Anthropologiques 10 (2015): 186–201. RecommendedBiersack, Aletta. "Reimagining Political Ecology: Culture / Power / History / Nature." In Reimagining Political Ecology. Edited by Aletta Biersack and James B. Greenberg. Duke University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780822336723. [Preview with Google Books] Goldman, Mara J., and Matthew D. Turner. "Introduction." In Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies. Edited by Mara J. Goldman, Paul Nadasdy, and Matthew D. Turner. University of Chicago Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780226301419. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 4 |
Agencies What kind of actors are humans and non-humans? What are the "ontology in the Anthropocene" debates and why should we care? |
Ahearn, Laura M. "Language and Agency." Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 109–37. Callon, Michel. "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and Fishermen of St. Brieuc's Bay." In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? Edited by John Law. Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1987. ISBN: 9780710208026. Fortun, Kim. "From Latour to Late Industrialism." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 1 (2014): 309–29. Latour, Bruno. "Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects too Have Agency." In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780199256051. ———. ———. "Colloquium: Another Way to Compose the Common World." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 1 (2014): 301–7. Ortner, Sherry B. "Specifying Agency: The Comaroffs and Their Critics." Interventions 3, no. 1 (2001): 76–84. Recommendedde Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. "Who is Afraid of the Ontological Wolf?: Some Comments on an Ongoing Anthropological Debate." Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33, no. 1 (2015): 2–17. Latour, Bruno. "Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World." Chapter 6 in Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. Edited by Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay. Sage Publications, 1983. ISBN: 9780803997820. |
| 5 | Species: Thinking Across Boundaries |
[H] [R] "In The Beginning." [R] "Air." [R] "Beauty." [R] "Chernobyl." [R] "Death." [R] "Evolution." [R] "Fever / Dream." [R] "Generosity (the Happy Times)." [R] "Notes." pp. 387–94. Helmreich, Stefan. "Introduction: Life at Sea." In Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628. [Preview with Google Books] ———. "The Message from the Mud: Making Meaning Out of Microbes in Monterey Bay." Chapter 1 in Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628. Kirksey, S. Eben, and Stefan Helmreich. "The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography." Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 4 (2010): 545–76. Kohn, Eduardo. "How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagements." American Ethnologist 34, no. 1 (2007): 3–24. Paxson, Heather. "Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States." Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 1 (2008): 15–47. ViewSweetgrass. Directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Color, 101 min. 2009. |
| 6 | Knowledges: How We Know and Whose Knowledge Counts? |
[M] "Prologue." [M] "Introduction." [M] Chapter 1: Guided Mobility. [M] Chapter 2: The Professoriate of the Hunt. [M] Chapter 3: The Coming of the Gun. [M] Chapter 4: Tsetse Invasions. [M] Chapter 5: The Professoriate of the Hunt and the Tsetse Fly.
Lave, Jean. "Introduction: Psychology and Anthropology I." Chapter 1 in Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780521357340. [Preview with Google Books] ———. "Inside the Supermarket (Outdoors) and From the Veranda." Chapter 5 in Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780521357340. [Preview with Google Books] Pigg, Stacy Leigh. "The Credible and the Credulous: The Question of 'Villagers' Beliefs' in Nepal." Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 2 (1996): 160–201. Walley, Christine J. "'They Scorn Us Because We are Uneducated': Knowledge and Power in a Tanzanian Marine Park." Ethnography 3, no. 3 (2002): 265–98. |
| 7 |
Ethnographies Mapping the Politics of Conservation; Exploring Ethnographic Methods and the Meeting of Ethnography, Oral History, and Theory |
[W] "Introduction: Conservation and Development in the Age of the 'Global'." [W] Chapter 1: Battling for the Marine Park. [W] Chapter 2: "When People Were As Worthless as Insects": History, Popular Memory, and Tourism on Chole. [W] Chapter 3: The Making and Unmaking of "Community." [W] Chapter 4: Where There Is No Nature. Lutz, Catherine. "The Gender of Theory." Chapter 12 in Women Writing Culture. Edited by Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon. University of California Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780520202085. Portelli, Alessandro. "The Peculiarities of Oral History." History Workshop 12 (1981): 96–107. RecommendedChapin, Mac. Hathaway, Michael. "The Emergence of Indigeneity: Public Intellectuals and an Indigenous Space in Southwest China." Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2010): 301–33. Hughes, David McDermott. "Third Nature: Making Space and Time in the Great Limpopo Conservation Area." Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 2 (2005): 157–84. |
| 8 |
Toxics (1) Occupational Health, Environmental Justice, and Postindustrial Ecologies: The Co-Production of Race, Class, and Toxicity |
[HE] "Preface." [HE] Chapter 7: Nuclearity at Work. [HE] Chapter 8: Invisible Exposures. [HE] Chapter 9: Hopes for the Irradiated Body. [S] Chapter 1: White City's Ghosts. [S] Chapter 2: The Progressive Allure of the Worker's Ills. [S] "Conclusion: Ordering Toxicity from the Workplace to the Environment." Murphy, Michelle. "Distributed Reproduction, Chemical Violence, and Latency." Scholar and Feminist Online 11, no. 3 (2013). Nash, Linda. "Modern Landscapes and Ecological Bodies." Chapter 4 in Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780520248878. ———. "Contesting the Space of Disease." Chapter 5 in Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780520248878. Articles Related to the Lead Poisoning Crisis in Flint, MI.Sorkin, Amy Davidson. "The Contempt that Poisoned Flint's Water." The New Yorker, January 22, 2016. Finnegan, William. "Flint and the Long Struggle Against Lead Poisoning." The New Yorker, February 4, 2016. Recommended[MU] Chapter 1: Man in a Box: Building-Machines and the Science of Comfort. [MU] Chapter 2: Building Ladies into the Office Machine. [MU] Chapter 4: Indoor Pollution at the Encounter of Toxicology and Popular Epidemiology. [MU] "Notes." [MU] "Bibliography." |
| 9 |
Toxics (2) From Endocrine Disruptors to Epigenetics: Rethinking Environmental Health |
[L] Chapter 2: Before World War II: Chemicals, Risk, and Regulation. [L] Chapter 3: Help for Women over Forty. [L] Chapter 4: Bigger, Stronger Babies with Diethylstilbestrol. [L] Chapter 5: Modern Meat: Hormones in Livestock. Borell, Brendan. "The Big Test for Bisphenol A." Nature 464, no. 22 (2010): 1122–24. Colborn, Theo, Frederick S. vom Saal, and Ana M. Soto. "Developmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wildlife and Humans." Environmental Health Perspectives 101, no. 5 (1993): 378–84. Lock, Margaret. "Comprehending the Body in the Era of the Epigenome." Current Anthropology 56, no. 2 (2015): 151–77. Vogel, Sarah A. "From 'The Dose Makes the Poison' to 'The Timing Makes the Poison': Conceptualizing Risk in a Synthetic Age." Environmental History 13, no. 4 (2006): 667–73. ———. "The Politics of Plastic: The Making and Unmaking of Bisphenol A 'Safety'." American Journal of Public Health 99, no. S3 (2009): S559–66. Myers, John Peterson, Frederick S. vom Saal, et al. "Why Public Health Agencies Cannot Depend on Good Laboratory Practices as a Criterion for Selecting Data: The Case of Bisphenol A." Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 3 (2009): 309–15. The following readings are associated correspondence to the Myers, et al., reading above.Becker, Richard A., Erik R. Janus, et al. "Good Laboratory Practices and Safety Assessments." Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 11 (2009): A482-3. Myers, John Peterson, Frederick S. vom Sall, et al. "Good Laboratory Practices: Myers et al. Respond." Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 11 (2009): A483-4. Kundi, Michael, Lennart Hardell, et al. "Electromagnetic Fields and the Precautionary Principle." Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 11 (2009): A484-5. vom Saal, Frederick S., John Peterson Meyers, et al. "Good Laboratory Practices Are Not Synonymous with Good Scientific Practices, Accurate Reporting, or Valid Data." Environmental Health Perspectives 118, no. 2 (2010): A60-1. Tyl, Rochelle W. "Good Laboratory Practices: Tyl Responds." Environmental Health Perspectives 118, no. 2 (2010): A60-1. ———. "Basic Exploratory Research versus Guideline-Compliant Studies Used for Hazard Evaluation and Risk Assessment: Bisphenol A as a Case Study." Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 11 (2009): 1644–51. Recommended[CO] "Prologue." [CO] "Preface to the Paperback Edition." [CO] Chapter 1: Omens. [CO] Chapter 2: Hand-Me-Down Poisons. [CO] Chapter 3: Chemical Messengers. [CO] Chapter 4: Hormone Havoc. Landecker, Hannah, and Aaron Panofsky. "From Social Structure to Gene Regulation, and Back: A Critical Introduction to Environmental Epigenetics for Sociology." Annual Review of Sociology 39 (2013): 333–57. |
| 10 | Climate Change: Why it Takes More than Information to Change Minds |
[C] View Clips FromInuit Knowledge and Climate Change. Directed by Zacharias Kanuk. Color, 54 min. 2010. Recommended[CRU] Chapter 1: Memories of the Little Ice Age. [CRU] Chapter 2: Constructing Life Stories: Glaciers as Social Spaces. [CRU] Chapter 5: Bringing Icy Regions Home: John Muir in Alaska. [CRU] Chapter 8: Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories. Wohlforth, Charles. "The Whale." Chapter 1 in The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. North Point Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780865477148. ———. "The Iñupiat." Chapter 2 in The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. North Point Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780865477148. |
| 11 |
Energy From "Fracking" to Citizen Science ScreeningGasLand. Directed by Josh Fox. Color, 107 min. 2010. |
Wylie, Sara. "Shale Gas: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds: An STS Analysis of Natural Gas Development in the United States." 2012. (Forthcoming from Duke University Press.) RecommendedBender, Bryan. "MIT's Ernest Moniz Advised Oil and Gas Investors," Boston Globe, March 30, 2013. Efstathiou, Jr., Jim. "Frackers Fund University Research That Proves Their Case." Bloomberg, July 24, 2012. Moniz, Ernest J., Henry D. Jacoby, et al. Navarro, Mireya. "SUNY Buffalo Shuts Down Its Institute on Drilling," New York Times, November 19, 2012. Public Accountability Initiative. Wogan, David. "Industry Money and Questionable Ethics Contaminate UT Austin Fracking Study." Scientific American, July 2012. Wylie, Sara, Megan McLaughlin, et al. "Public Laboratories: Designing and Developing tools for Do-It-Yourself Detection of Hazards." Limn 3, June 2013. |
| 12 | Discussion of Final Papers | No readings assigned |
| 13 | Final presentations and end of semester potluck | No readings assigned |
Additional Recommended Readings
Debaene, Vincent. "A Case of Cultural Misunderstanding: French Anthropology in a Comparative Perspective." Cultural Anthropology 28, no. 4 (2013): 647–69.
Garland, Elizabeth. "Prologue: Three Tales from the Wilds." In State of Nature: Colonial Power, Neoliberal Capital, and Wildlife Management in Tanzania: Volume One. Dissertation. University of Chicago, December 2006.
———. "Capturing Nature's Potential: Extraction and Sovereignty in the Nation's 'Protected' Areas." In State of Nature: Colonial Power, Neoliberal Capital, and Wildlife Management in Tanzania: Volume One. Dissertation. University of Chicago, December 2006.
———. "The Elephant in the Room: Confronting the Colonial Character of Wildlife Conservation in Africa." African Studies Review 51, no. 3 (2008): 51–74.
Gessen, Keith. "Polar Express: A Reporter at Large." The New Yorker, December 24 and 31, 2012.
Haraway, Donna. "Teddy Bear Patriarchy Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936." Chapter 3 in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Service. Routledge, 1990. ISBN: 9780415902946.
Heatherington, Tracey. "The Changing Terrain of Environmentality: EIONET and the New Landscapes of Europe." Anthropological Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2012): 555–79.
Kohn, Eduardo. "Introduction: Runa Puma." In How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. University of California Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780520276116. [Preview with Google Books]
———. "The Open Whole." Chapter 1 in How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. University of California Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780520276116. [Preview with Google Books]
Lowe, Celia. "Making the Monkey: How the Togean Macaque Went from 'New Form' to 'Endemic Species' in Indonesians' Conservation Biology." Cultural Anthropology 19, no. 4 (2004): 491–516.
Murphy, Michelle. "'The Elsewhere Within Here' and Environmental Illness or How to Build Yourself a Body in a Safe Space." Configurations 8, no. 1 (2000): 87–120.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. "The Denial of Global Warming." Chapter 6 in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press, 2011. ISBN: 9781608193943. [Preview with Google Books]
Raffles, Hugh. "A Conjoined Fate." Orion 29, no. 1 (2010): 16–27.
Walley, Christine. "Deindustrializing Chicago: A Daughter's Story." Chapter 6 in The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do about It. Edited by Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520259713.
———. "Introduction." In Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226871806. [Preview with Google Books]
———. "A World of Iron and Steel: A Family Album." Chapter 1 in Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226871806. [Preview with Google Books]
———. "The Ties That Bind." Chapter 4 in Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226871806. [Preview with Google Books]
———. "Notes to Chapter Four." In Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226871806. [Preview with Google Books]
———. "Bibliography." In Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226871806.