ANTHR 6417 - Nature/Culture: The Politics of Human-Environment Relations

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Co-meets with ANTHR 3417.

P. Nadasdy.

One of the central debates in ecological anthropology has been over how we should understand the relationship between nature (or “the environment”) and culture (or society) and whether these should even be viewed as separate domains. These questions have important implications for how we go about thinking and acting in such diverse social arenas as environmental politics, development, and indigenous-state relations. This course examines the various ways anthropologists and other scholars have conceptualized the relationship between humans and the environment and considers the political entailments of such conceptualizations.