Course Overview

Understanding coupled natural/environmental and human systems is fundamental to the quest for sustainability. But, what is “nature” or “environment”, or what are environmental issues? In this lecture, nature, environment, and envrionmental issues are discussed as a social construct subject to changing perceptions. To bridge the gap between natural and social students, theories and concepts from both, natural sciences and social sciences, are presented, which are relevant for human-environment interaction research. Climate change as a current threat is discussed from the natural science perspective as well as from deeply entrenched social worldviews to explore a complex environmental problem from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

Learning Achievement

The goals is to equip students with perspectives and a language that can be used in cross-disciplinary research teams. This helps students to learn how to frame their research to communicate their own interests effectively with researchers of other disciplines and with public.

Competence

Course prerequisites

Grading Philosophy

2 assignments (20% each) during coursework, final assignment 60%.

Course schedule

This lecture is held online. Check information on Manaba a few days before the lecture starts to find out how the course is implemented. 1. Development of the human population 2. What is nature? 3. Technocratic, ecocentric and social view on nature 4. External, intrinsic and universal nature of nature 5. Changing perception of the environment: from Golden Age to the civilizing process 6. Environmental change and societal resilience: factors for societal collapse 7. Theories and concepts from natural science 8. Theories and concepts from social science 9. Climate change from the natural science perspective 10. Deeply entrenched views on climate change

Course type

lectures

Online Course Requirement

Instructor

Parkner Thomas

Other information

Course is held online (Microsoft Teams, synchronous & asynchronous). Not offered from 2023. Identical to 1F90011. JTP. Online(Synchronous)

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