Bi4224 Environmental anthropology

Faculty of Science
Spring 2023
Extent and Intensity
1/0/0. 2 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Paride Bollettin, MSc., Ph.D. (lecturer)
Kelly Marie Sambucci (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
Paride Bollettin, MSc., Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology – Biology Section – Faculty of Science
Contact Person: Paride Bollettin, MSc., Ph.D.
Supplier department: Department of Anthropology – Biology Section – Faculty of Science
Timetable
Mon 14:00–15:50 online
Prerequisites
The course does not require any prerequisite.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The course aims at making students able to observe, study, and discuss the complex interactions intermingling humans and their biosocial environments. The course will be offered virtually and it will be open also for students from universities in Brazil, Uganda and Namibia, so offering the opportunity for the participants to join colleagues from other continents in shared reflections.
Learning outcomes
Trough the course, students will acquire basic knowledge on:
1) the diverse ways of situate human-environment relations along the history of anthropological debates;
2) alternative, culturally grounded, forms of experiencing the environment in diverse societies;
3) current debates on the complexity of human-environment interactions with an eye on the ecological and health crisis.
Syllabus
  • Course program:

    3rd April: Introduction to the topic people-environment
    Ingold, Tim. 2013. Dreaming of dragons: on the imagination of real life. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19: 734-752.
    Krenak, Ailton. 2022. Thinking With Your Head on Earth. In Luca Bacchini, Victoria Saramago (eds.). Literature Beyond the Human: Post-Anthropocentric Brazil, 235-239. New York: Routledge.

    17th April: Differences in environment experiences
    Ampumuza and Driessen. 2021. Gorilla habituation and the role of animal agency in conservation and tourism development at Bwindi, South Western Uganda. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 4(4): 1601-1621.
    Brown, Kate. 2019. Learning to Read the Great Chernobyl Acceleration. Current Anthropology 60(20): 198-208.

    24th April: Relations people-environment-health
    Blue, Gwendolyn and Rock, Melanie. 2020. Genomic trans-biopolitics: Why more-than-human geography is critical amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Dialogues in Human Geography 10(2): 287–290.
    Calkins, Sandra. 2019. ‘Bananas, Humanitarian Biotech, and Human-Plant Histories in Uganda’. Medicine Anthropology Theory 6 (3): 29–53.

    8th May: Multispecies experiences and health
    Laine and Morand. 2020. Linking humans, their animals, and the environment again: a decolonized and more-than-human approach to “One Health”. Parasite 27(55).
    Reis-Castro, Luisa. 2021. Becoming Without: Making Transgenic Mosquitoes and Disease Control in Brazil. Environmental Humanities 13(2): 323-347.

    15th May: Environmental inequalities and environmental racism
    Recommended reading:
    Benezra, Amber. 2020. Race in the Microbiome. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 45(5): 877-902.
    Karera, Axelle. 2019. Blackness and the Pitfalls of Anthropocene Ethics. Critical Philosophy of Race 7(1): 32-56.

    22nd May: Final meeting: presentations of the final works and evaluation of the course

Teaching methods
The classes will be held online (platform will be indicated), with introducing presentations and collective discussions.
Additionally, every week we will develop collective on line exercises (platform will be indicated) to introduce the different topics.
Assessment methods
Students will be asked to produce a a collective exercise.
At the beginning of the course we will create groups joining students from diverse involved institutions for the realization of tese exercises and we will provide all the relative instructions.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
Teacher's information
Paride Bollettin: https://www.muni.cz/en/people/247100-paride-bollettin
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2022, Spring 2024, Spring 2025.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2023, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/sci/spring2023/Bi4224