Dimitris Stevis
Fridays 2:00-4:50, in person
This seminar explores questions of social and environmental justice during green/sustainability transitions through the lens of the concept of just transition. A just transition is one that is socially and ecologically just towards the people and natures affected by a transition. In this seminar, in fact, we will expand the universe of transitions in a variety of ways, particularly to reflect your interests. First we will assume that all social transitions are also environmental and all environmental transitions are also social. Second, we will move beyond energy to address a range of sociotechnical transitions, including transitions in the organization of production and consumptions and the nature of work (The Future of Work). Third, we will also focus on social transitions, whether related to gender, race, ethnicity or class. Finally, because of the foundational significance of global social divisions of labor, this seminar will be particularly attune to questions of positionality across and within borders. Thus this is not a seminar exclusively and narrowly on just green transitions but, rather, uses the concept to explore broader debates in green political economy and political ecology with particular attention to socioecological justice, power and democracy.
Air Quality Characterization
Ambient air pollution is a burden that is not evenly shared. This graduate course is centered on a service learning project where students partner with a community to design, plan, and execute a hypothesis-driven air pollution measurement campaign over the course of the semester. Through this exercise, students will examine environmental injustice in an air pollution context, and gain an in-depth understanding of a particular environmental justice case in Colorado. They will learn to design, propose, and execute community-centered air pollution research, gain familiarity with multiple new low-cost air pollution monitoring technologies, and learn to communicate scientific findings centered on community concerns.
Water Resource Planning & Management
Global Environmental Justice Movements
How the world's poor and minorities self-empower to challenge institutional racism and government apathy in order to secure basic environmental goods.
Management and planning of natural and constructed water systems. Integrated management and case studies of water use and environmental resources.
Economics of Environmental Sustainablity
Professor Joanne Burgess Barbier is leading this course after being awarded a Sustainability Curriculum Innovation Grant from SoGES.
Infrastructure & Utility Management
Infrastructure and utility planning, management, and security. Systems approach to life cycle management. Problems, analysis, decision support systems.
Development in Indian Country
Critical examination of history, public policy, and tribal strategies for economic development and natural resource management in Indian country.
Food Justice
Introduction to Environmental Justice
This introductory course explores and analyzes vital topics related to environmental degradation, human health, and social activism. More specifically, how are environmental problems experienced by different racial/ethnic groups, social classes, and genders? How do access to financial resources or geographic location impact people’s exposure to environmental toxins? What roles do corporations, governments, communities, and social movements play in these outcomes?
Food justice includes all ideas and practices that strive to eliminate exploitation and oppression and challenge the structural drivers of all forms of inequality within and beyond the food system. Food justice advocates for the right to healthy food that is produced justly, recognizes diverse cultural foodways and histories, and promotes equitable distribution of resources, democratic participation, and control over food systems. This focus on social justice broadens the predominant emphasis on environmental sustainability within most alternative food politics in the United States.
Food Systems & Agriculture
“Food is necessary for human survival.” We hear this hackneyed axiom regularly. But what does this mean? In and of itself, it masks the social with an appeal to the biological and overlooks the ecological as an invisible prerequisite. In the spirit, therefore, of unmasking the complexities of the food system, this course will delve into why food matters to society beyond the obvious need for sustenance. We will investigate the economic, political, and social underpinnings and outcomes of food and agricultural systems. We will also consider ecological entanglements, one of the many dialectics driving our collective inquiry this semester.
Environmental Justice
This graduate level course examines the unequal distributions of environmental risks, benefits, policies and regulatory practices across different populations. The course explores the meaning of social justice, environmental justice, environmental quality and environmental equity and examines the history of the environmental justice movement and evidence of environmental injustices. Processes of social control in response to environmental harms and policies that address environmental inequities are considered as well as political economic explanations of injustices.
Globalization, Sustainability and Justice
Public and private policies to promote sustainability and social justice in a globalizing world.
Soc. of Environmental Cooperation & Conflict
Public and private policies to promote sustainability and social justice in a globalizing world.
Society & Environment
Technology as a social phenomenon interacting with social organization and the natural environment.
Water, Society, and Environment
Social aspects of water resource utilization; interface of social organization with physical environment.
Sociology of Disaster
Determinants and consequences of behavior and response to environmental extremes including floods, earthquakes, wind, severe storms, and technological emergencies.
Environmental Sociology
Connections between social organizations, the environment, and science and technology.