SOSANT4505 – Environmental Anthropology, Honours
Course description
Course content
What characterizes peoples’ relationship to the environment and the living world? How do different people think and act in response to changes in their environmental surroundings? How are extractive practices justified, and what forms of resistance exist? How are plants, animals, birds and fish known, and what sorts of relations beyond the human make local surroundings meaningful?
This course is an introduction to some of the central themes in environmental anthropology as well as an exploration of some recent anthropological analyses of environmental change. Drawing on a range of ethnographic studies the course provides perspectives on topics such as:
- How peoples’ understanding of the environment can be related to their sense of self, identity, and moral obligation.
- ?How nature—animals, plants and landscapes—can become sites of contestation and conflict.
- How environments can elicit different forms of knowledge.
- How global inequality and colonial dispossession are connected to climate change and biodiversity loss.
- ?How both slow and sudden environmental crises affect how we think about the future and what it means to be human.
Learning outcome
Knowledge
- Knowledge of environmental issues and anthropological approaches to studying these
- Knowledge of anthropological approaches to global environmental change
- ?Understanding of the social and historical and colonial processes that underlie and contribute to global environmental change
- ?Knowledge of how words, practices and moral understandings shape our relations to nature
Skills
- The ability to critically analyse arguments and statements
- The ability to recognise and acknowledge radically different approaches to nature and the environment
- The ability to articulate theoretical arguments based on case studies
Competences
- Achieve independent academic thought
- The ability to construct and express analytical arguments both verbally and in the written form
Admission to the course
Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for?in Studentweb.
If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about?admission requirements and procedures.
This course is available for students admitted to the master's supplement?in Environmental Humanities and Sciences.
Overlapping courses
- 5 credits overlap with SOSANT2510 – Environmental Anthropology.
Teaching
The course is made up of a series of lectures. These follow the teaching on SOSANT2510.
Examination
The exam will consist of a semester essay with a minimum of 2000 words and maximum 4000 words including cover page and foot- or endnotes.
Examination support material
All exam support materials are allowed during this exam. Generating all or part of the exam answer using AI tools such as Chat GPT or similar is not allowed.
Language of examination
You may write your examination paper in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F?is a fail. Read more about?the grading system.
Also see?Grading guidelines in social anthropology
Resit an examination
It is possible to take the exam up to 3 times. If you?withdraw from the exam?after the deadline or during the exam, this will be counted as an examination attempt.
More about examinations at UiO
- Use of sources and citations
- Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
- Withdrawal from an exam
- Illness at exams / postponed exams
- Explanation of grades and appeals
- Resitting an exam
- Cheating/attempted cheating
You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.