Rachel Carson Center

P.5.1 Natures and Justice

This course grapples with the interrelations of environmental problems, society, and justice as a fundamental challenge of our times, from pollution and natural disasters to food deserts, oil production, and housing crises.

 In P 5.1, we will analyse uneven socio-environmental conditions to ask how social, political, and economic aspects shape the ‘environment’ and ideas of responsibility. Using global case studies and drawing from readings in anthropology, geography, history, design and art, we will examine: historical and contemporary discourses about nature-based justice; how colonised and marginalised people bear the disproportionate burdens of environmental injustice; and how communities, activists, and publics respond to these conditions and deploy ideas of ‘justice’. We will study nature-based movements and shape our own perspectives with an eye on the commonalities and contradictions between approaches to environmental justice in the Global North and in the Global South. 

Streets make cities and cities make streets. They are central to human culture; public (and private) life occurs on them. Streets enable transportation, commerce, and communication of various kinds. They are the product of wayfaring as well as planning. They have developed out of ancient human trails as well as designs for absolutist rulers and democratic municipalities. They are used for ostentatious representations of political power and control as well as for rallies organized by bottom-up movements and protest; and they are sites of oppression and bloody wars on the one hand, and of freedom and peaceful revolutions on the other. Streets have been built to open and forge connections, and they have been used as boundaries and instruments of urban renewal destroying neighborhoods and displacing their residents. Streets are predominantly made for movement of various kinds. These have changed with time and technological development, and on occasion one form of movement has been favored over another. In this seminar we will explore what a street is; why, how, by whom, and for whom streets are built; who uses streets and how; who manages and takes care of them; what select streets smell and sound like; and how streets are represented in various media.

This seminar traces the long-lasting and severe impact of dams in American history and culture – storing water behind earthen and concrete walls has served to produce energy, to protect against flooding and to “conserve” water for agricultural and urban demands. In the process of dam construction, entire villages have been flooded (and sometimes reappeared) and its inhabitants displaced. Also, the creation of dams, and in particular big dams, often came at the cost of devastating environmental consequences. More recently, environmentalists have argued for the removal of dams, in some cases successfully.