Ecology and Politics
Term:
Spring 2012
Subject Code:
GPOL
Course Number:
6468
This course will examine the relationship between ecology and
politics, using the controversies surrounding biodiversity as its primary focus.
First, we will explore the basic contours of biodiversity as an environmental
political issue: what does biodiversity mean? What is causing biodiversity to
decline at multiple scales, and what international political action has been
taken to prevent it from disappearing further? Second, we will examine the birth
of the biodiversity sciences, focusing particularly on the dual roles of Western
conservation biologists as natural scientists and political advocates. How were
the key scientific and political concepts that constituted biodiversity formed
and contested? What have been the political effects of the idea of global
biodiversity on issues like the ownership of genetic information and the
conservation of rainforests? What is at stake politically in thinking of
biodiversity loss as a moment of emergency, crisis, and exception? Finally, we
will examine some specific sites of political-scientific action, including the
production of the global biodiversity census; the making of tropical
biodiversity “hotspots”; and the rise of biocultural diversity as an organizing
logic surrounding UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
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