Anthropology 397SD - ST-SustainbltySustainingDvlpmt
Spring
2017
01
3.00
Boone Shear
M W 2:30PM 3:45PM
UMass Amherst
20717
How is sustainable development imagined, discursively constructed, and implemented in different locations? Who and what benefits from sustainable development and who and what suffers? What is the relationship between economy and ecology? And how might we begin to imagine, organize around, and enact truly sustainable and socially just worlds?
The course is divided up into three overlapping sections. We begin by critically exploring capitalist development as a theoretical structure, as a form of governance, and as mobilized through neoliberal rationalities. We then query sustainable development projects that attempt to reconcile capitalist development and social and ecological well-being. In the final section we seek to locate economic and ecological sustainability in relation to social movements, policies, and initiatives that are working to build non-capitalist relationships. We explore the conditions under which collective ethical decision-making is possible; we consider how people are materially and subjectively transformed as they engage in ethical economic relationships; and we think about the possibilities for expanding or engaging in our own community economies.
The course is divided up into three overlapping sections. We begin by critically exploring capitalist development as a theoretical structure, as a form of governance, and as mobilized through neoliberal rationalities. We then query sustainable development projects that attempt to reconcile capitalist development and social and ecological well-being. In the final section we seek to locate economic and ecological sustainability in relation to social movements, policies, and initiatives that are working to build non-capitalist relationships. We explore the conditions under which collective ethical decision-making is possible; we consider how people are materially and subjectively transformed as they engage in ethical economic relationships; and we think about the possibilities for expanding or engaging in our own community economies.