DSOC 7500 - Food, Ecology, and Agrarian Change

(CU-SBY)

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

Enrollment limited to: graduate students.

R. Bezner Kerr.

This seminar is concerned with the sociology of agri-food systems and their ecological relations. Modernization narratives, in casting agriculture as an original baseline of human development, have (inadvertently or not) consigned agriculture, and food, to the margins of social thought and analysis. The current crisis of the global food economy has focused attention and public discourse on agriculture, and its increasingly evident ecological implications. Pressing ecological questions, in addition to the latest food crisis, are forcing a new look at the agri-food system and its social and environmental functions. This seminar is designed to introduce students to analytical approaches and contemporary issues and processes concerning food, ecology and agrarian change.

Outcome 1: Discuss analytical perspectives on the relationships embedded in food and agrarian systems and their political, geopolitical and ecological implications.

Outcome 2: Propose alternatives to the dominant mode of agriculture and agrarian relations.

Outcome 3: Produce a term paper that addresses theoretical and/or empirical questions around a seminar topic or theme.