Anth/Soc 370:

Global Environmental Issues

Spring 2017
Anspach 306: Tuesdays 2:00-3:15pm
Prof. Alan P. Rudy
132 Anspach
rudy1a@cmich.edu
Office Hours: T-Th 11:30am to 12:30pm and by appointment.

1. Introduction
Just as every syllabus represents an argument, this class is an
argument built around a murder mystery, kinda. The argument
presented here is that the world as it has been made for and by us has
killed the idea and practical reality of Nature (note the capital N) and
that our job in environmental and social politics is to figure out:
What does it mean for environmental thought and politics
that (pristine, original, pre-human) Nature no longer
exists?
What does it mean that all of the (little n) natures we
know are the product of earlier rounds of socionatural
transformation?
What is an environmental problem under these conditions?
o Are environmental problems primarily ecological or
inherently political or social ecological?
o If environmental problems are inescapably social and
political, are technological solutions going to get at
the root causes of those problems?
o If environmental problems are worse for low income
and disempowered people than they are for upper
income and powerful groups, who ought to be driving
environmental politics, elites or others?

Some personal info: My moms family were elite preservationists

and conservationists going back to the 19th century, while my dads
family were middle-of-Pennsylvania rednecks. My parents were not
only committed anti-pollutionists and members of the group ZPG
(Zero Population Growth) in the 70s, but led the opposition to putting
a highway through a local NJ forest reserve with endangered species.
My dad also started the volunteer recycling center, later taken over by
the Township, and was active in water politics throughout NE Penn,
Northern Jersey and SE New York.
Growing up, we hiked, camped and river/whitewater canoed, in
MO, NH, PA, MN, WA and AK, as well. For a time, I was going to be an
ecologist. My undergraduate degree is in Biology, and I studied acid
rain and alpine lakes, streams, and fish for my senior paper. I also
spent the summer after my Junior year interning with the Friends of
the Earth/Pesticide Action Network in San Francisco.
After college, I worked as a lab tech in a bone marrow transplant
research lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center in
New York. We used immunotoxin-labeled or steel bearing-attached
cell surface anti-bodies (generated by recombinant DNA) to kill or
magnetically-remove T1 cells from donor bone marrow intended for
childhood leukemia patients. The idea was to sort out donor white
cells in order to reduce or preclude deadly graft-vs-host disease. I
played a lot of Ultimate, even qualified for Nationals in Houston in
86, and attended a lot of post-punk/college rock shows, during that
time.
I then went to grad school in Sociology long story and
focused on the relationship between labor and environmental justice
struggles and the ecological contradictions of irrigated agriculture in
the desert southwest. This work combined agrifood, science and
environmental studies as well as environmental sociological theory.
I came to Michigan to work at MSU and the main focus of my
research was agricultural development, GMO crops, and a
controversy at UC Berkeley around an agreement between the
University and Novartis Corporation. Apparently, I spent too much
time teaching undergraduates and working with graduate students
and not writing large grants or generating enough publications and,
when they told me to leave, I landed at CMU where I have been
inordinately happy.
Last year, two colleagues and I published a book well be reading
a good bit of, Environments, Natures and Social Theory, and I earned
tenure. Im the Sociology representative to the departments Advisory
Council and the departments representative on the CMU Academic
Senate.
My wife a Legislative Services Librarian at the State Library, in
Lansing - and I have two bright, athletic, musical and exhausting boys,
14.5 and 12.

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 2. Expectations
This course is a good bit of work. It is not a list of bad things
happening to nature around the world. I have structured it so that we
develop the kinds of hybrid natural and social scientific tools
necessary to understand global environmental problems at different
scales rather than promote apocalyptic freak outs about how were all
screwed unless everything changes tomorrow. I am NOT saying that
the world is unworthy of freaking out about, only that reactive freak
outs almost always generate more environmental and social problems
than they solve.
Many of the readings challenge and extend conventional
understandings of environmentalism. Others draw on intellectual
traditions many of you are not experienced with this is a GOOD
thing (but it doesnt make it easier). Occams Razor conventionally
fails when applied to environmental problems because the idea that,
when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same
predictions, the simpler one is the better, is only worth a darn if your
two competing theories are BOTH good. When most competing
theories FAIL to get at the social roots of natural problems and
therefore look for technical solutions, simple or complex they dont
get to the causes of the problem and simply displace the problem at
best or make it worse most of the time.
This course will work best when everyone does the whole of the
reading OR AT LEAST A FEW OF THE BLOGS for each class
before the class meets. My student evaluations regularly note how
important it is to do the readings, and read the blogs and comments,
before coming to class. There are a good number pages of reading for
each class session. Some of the readings are not easy. I do not expect
that they will be completely understood but I do expect that they will
be read and questions will be formulated at however basic a level
including What do the following words mean?!
I might be able to be talked into extra credit (1 point per quality
tweet, no more than one per week and a maximum of 8 points) for
those who tweet substantive questions with the hashtag
#cmuglobenvtalprobs by midnight before class meets.

3. Assignments
WRITING/BLOGGING:
To reduce the frequency of professorial lectures to passive
students, most class sessions will be preceded by student blogging

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posted two nights before the class meets on the assigned readings
for that day. This is how it will work:

1. Each of you will have to sign up for a http://wordpress.com

account (see below) and share with me on a Google Sheet
(https://goo.gl/YCy0ub ) your wordpress ID and email.
a. I will use that information to invite you to be an Author
on the course blog
https://s2017globenvtalprobs.wordpress.com
b. You will receive an email from wordpress inviting you to
the course blog. You must click on the link/button to
accept, reading the email is not enough.
2. Each of you will also have to select three readings assigned at
various points across the semester, depending on your
interests, on which you will write 2-3 page
critical/engaged/inquisitive summary essays and post them to
the course blog.
a. These selections will be registered by putting your name
in the appropriate cell on a google spreadsheet -
https://goo.gl/Xtz0Pr
b. The readings are to be completed and the essays
prepared and posted to the blog two nights before
the class meets (Sunday night for Tuesday
sessions, Tuesday nights for Thursday meetings).

The schedule for the blogging will go something like this:

SUNDAY MIDNIGHT blog posts for Tues. readings are due
TUESDAY class is held try to read both the article and a blog.
TUESDAY MIDNIGHT blog posts on Thurs. readings are due.
THURSDAY class is held try to read both the article and a blog.
THURSDAY MIDNIGHT the personal essays from TUESDAY
are due.
SATURDAY MIDNIGHT the personal essays from THURSDAY
are due.

The idea is that all of the students who blog or comment will
have completed and engaged the reading to a point where they are
likely to be able to actively contribute in class. Furthermore, everyone
else whos done the reading can read what other students are
thinking and bring that engagement to the discussion and some who
for always-excellent reasons werent able to get to the readings for a

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particular day will be able to read the blogs and comments as an aid
to participation and understanding

To sign up for wordpress,

1. Go to http://wordpress.com and click on the Create a Website
button.
a. If you go through the regular sign up process you will both
establish a wordpress ID and your own blog you dont
ever have to use it.
i. Please select a username that I can identify as you
your cmich email name is most straightforward but
anything I can clearly identify will work. Names like
4the1Ilove or ruleroftheknownuniverse makes life
hard on me when grading.
ii. When you are asked to submit an email address your
cmich email will make things easiest for me, but that
is less important than your ID.
b. Be sure to click on the Sign Up button.
i. All of the course work will be done on the course
blog. If it is posted to your personal blog, I will
miss it, not grade it and points will be lost.
2. You will be sent an email by Wordpress with a link you will need
to click on to confirm your registration for Wordpress.

For an excellent tutorial on how to go about many of these steps,

and AS IMPORTANTLY to post to the blog, click here:
http://learn.wordpress.com/ On that page there are 12 links, all are
pertinent to you if you chose to have your own blog, at a minimum 3.
Get Started and 7. Get Published should be reviewed.
HOW TO THINK ABOUT YOUR BLOGGING
In my experience, many CMU students havent done many close
readings of complete journal articles or book chapters. Oftentimes,
when I have asked students for engaged restatements of or queries
about the content of a reading, I have received either extremely
superficial or quite partial accounts of the material assigned. A few
years back, therefore, I opted to mandate that the blogging account
for the whole article making it somewhat formulaic in the first
instance.
To counter the potential lack of stimulation associated with
synthesizing a condensed restatement of the argument made by the
researcher, a second component of blogging was added. Whereas the
first blog is to be posted two nights before we meet.

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 A more personal follow-up commentary is to be written and
posted in the two days following class. This second text is intended to
allow students to show what was clarified (or made more confusing) in
class or to express or show connections they made to personal
experiences or other academic content in their lives.
It might seem that way but the purpose of the blogging is NOT
to have you generate a report on what the reading said. If you write
a variation of The reading said this, and then this, and then
this other thing ending with I thought it was interesting, or
boring, or incomprehensible or wrong, you will not get much,
if any, credit for the assignment. I have read the text, the other
students are expected to have read the text, we should not need to be
told what the text says.

BLOGS LOOK LIKE THIS THEN:

Imagine that you were assigned to read a chapter on Hybridity
that Damian White and I co-authored for a Sage Handbook on
Environmental Politics, your blog post would be structured around the
headings and subheadings in the chapter like this:
_______________________________________________

13. Hybridity - Alan P. Rudy and Damian White

1. Introduction
a. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
2. Core ideas
a. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
3. Key thinkers
a. Bruno Latour
i. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
b. Donna Haraway
i. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
4. Critical potential I: Hybrid environmental social and natural
sciences?
a. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
5. Critical potential II: Hybrid politics?
a. Critical hybrid environmental politics
i. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
b. Post-environmental hybrid politics
i. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
6. Conclusion
a. 4-7 sentences condensing the key points
_______________________________________________

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 The personal/subjective essay is more flexible. I still expect
coherent positions to be staked out, or meaningful cases to be
introduced, or pertinent connections to be made, but the key is that
the text illuminate something about your learning, experiences,
extensions of the material, etc.
It is really important to write your blog posts and
comments in a word processor or text editing software on your
computer or in the cloud someplace where you have the
ability to save those files for at least the next six months. More
than one student has lost or received points at the end of the semester
when it appeared work hadnt been completed on time but they could
or couldnt prove it had been done on time with files created on the
appropriate date.
This course is critically social scientific to its core and most
people with environmental commitments are used to thinking about
the environment in natural scientific and technological terms. This
course, however, is more about critically engaging how and why we
think about environmental problems and politics the way we do than it
is about the problems themselves. In the past some students have had
to push themselves a little to make the kind of connections introduced
here. When in doubt KEEP READING; TRUST YOURSELF, youll
pick up more than you think just getting through it and then
going back over it to find what to write about.
EXAMS:
There are four take-home exams where you will be asked to use
information and perspectives from recently engaged readings to
interpret an additional article (perhaps selecting one article from
three available options). These will be due submitted to Blackboard
electronically.
THE BOOK REVIEW:
We will decide, by the end of January, on four classic
environmental books. You are to choose one to read and engage in
order to produce a critical review, bouncing material from the class
off of key elements of the book and coming to a personal conclusion
on the texts strengths and weaknesses.

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 4. BOOKS
There are two mandatory books to buy, the rest of the readings
are available via the library or internet.
Erik Loomis, 2015, Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story
of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe, The New Press
(ISBN: 9781620970089)
Damian White, Alan Rudy and Brian Gareau, 2015, Natures,
Environments and Social Theory: Towards a Critical
Hybridity, Palgrave (ISBN: 9780230241046)

5. GRADES
Objective Blogs 3*8 2
Subjective Follow- 3*5 1
Tests 4*9 3
Book Review 1*11 1
Attendance 14 = 3 unexcused ( 1
TOTAL 1

6. DAILY WORK
1. INTRODUCTION Introduction
1.1. January 10th You, Me, Why Were Here, and The Socio-
environmental Imagination
1.2. January 12th READ, AS ASSIGNED, SMALL GROUPS,
SHARE WITH CLASS
A. David Gessner 2004. Sick of Nature Boston Globe. Aug. 1.
B. Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands 2005. Unnatural Passions?:
Notes Toward a Queer Ecology. Invisible Culture, 9.
C. Williams, Raymond. 1980. Ideas of Nature. Pp. 67-85 in
Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso.
D. Elizabeth A.R. Bird. 1987. The Social Construction of
Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of
Environmental Problems. Environmental Review, Winter:
255-264.

2. ENVIRONMENTALISM, NATURE AND LABOR I

2.1. January 17th - A Quick and Dirty History of

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 Environmentalism
Conservation, Preservation, Anti-Pollutionism, Envtal Justice,
Radical Envtalisms
2.2. January 19th Loomis, 2015, Out of Sight Intro, Ch.1 and
Ch.2 Blogging

3. ENVIRONMENTALISM, NATURE AND LABOR II

3.1. January 24th Loomis, 2015, Out of Sight, Ch.3 and Ch.4
Blogging
3.2. January 26th Loomis, 2015, Out of Sight, Ch.5 and Ch.6
Blogging

4. THE IDEA OF NATURE WHITE, RUDY and GAREAU I

4.1. January 31st Chapter 1: Unnatural Social Theory?
Blogging
4.2. February 2nd Chapter 2: Hybrid Histories Blogging

EXAM ONE

5. OVERPOPULATION, THE COMMONS, AND

PRIVATIZATION?
5.1. February 7th Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The Tragedy of the
Commons. Science 162: 1243-1248. Blogging
5.2. February 9th Lapp, Frances Moore and Rachel
Schurman. 1990. Taking Population Seriously. San Francisco:
Institute for Food and Development Policy. Blogging

6. OR MAYBE NOT TRAGEDY BUT, UM, POWER

6.1. February 14th Goldman, Michael. 1997. Customs in
Common: The Epistemic World of the Commons Scholars.
Theory and Society. 26:1-37. Blogging
6.2. February 16th White, Rudy and Gareau, 2015, Chapter 3:
Limits/No Limits? Blogging

7. GREEN CONSUMPTION AND MARKET NATURES

7.1. February 21st Andrew Szasz Intro, Ch.6 Imaginary
Refuge, Ch.7 Political Anesthesia Blogging
7.2. February 23rd White, Rudy and Gareau Chapter 9:
Anthropocene Politics I Blogging

8. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND POLITICAL ECOLOGY

8.1. February 28th Szasz and Meuser, 1997, Environmental

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 Inequalities Blogging
8.2. March 2nd White, Rudy and Gareau, Chapter 4: Social
Environmentalism, Possiblism and Political Ecology
Blogging

EXAM TWO Due to BB, Friday, March 17 at 5:00pm

SPRING BREAK, SPRING BREAK, SPRING

BREAK
9. POLITICAL ECOLOGY I
9.1. March 14th Mike Davis, 2004, Planet of Slums
Blogging
9.2. March 16th White, Rudy and Gareau, Chapter 8: Culture,
Spaces, Power Blogging

10. POLITICAL ECOLOGY II

10.1. March 21st Neumann, Roderick P. 1992. Political Ecology
of Wildlife Conservation in the Mt. Meru area of NE Tanzania.
Land Degradation & Rehabilitation 3:85-98. Blogging
10.2. March 23rd Pulido, Laura. 1998. Ecological Legitimacy
and Cultural Essentialism. Pp. 293-311 in The Struggle for
Ecological Democracy, D. Faber (ed.). New York: Guilford
Press. Blogging

11. ANTHROPOCENE OR CAPITALOCENE

11.1. March 28th Mirzoeff, 2016 Its Not The Anthropocene,
Its The White Supremacy Scene, Or, The Geological Color
Line Blogging
11.2. March 30th GENTLE DAY OFF

EXAM THREE, DUE TO BB Wednesday, April 5th at 11:59pm

12. CLIMATE CHANGE and Politics

12.1. April 4th Moore 2016 Introduction: Anthropocene or
Capitalocene? Blogging
12.2. April 6th IPCC, 2014. Summary for Policymakers. In:
Climate Change 2014, Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, UK. (CLICK ON THIS LINK!!!!)

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 13. CLIMATE POLITICS CIPLET, ROBERTS and KHAN
13.1. April 11th Preface and Chapter 1: Trading a Livable
World Blogging
13.2. April 13th Chapter 2: Power Shift Blogging

14. CLIMATE CHANGE CIPLET, ROBERTS and KHAN

14.1. April 18th Chapter 3: Beyond the North-South Divide?
Blogging
14.2. April 20th Chapter 4: Manufacturing Consent Blogging

15. GLOBAL URBANIZATION AND/OR GOVERNANCE

15.1. April 25th Chapter 8: Contesting Climate Injustice
Blogging
15.2. April 27th Chapters 9&10: Power in a Future World and
Linking Movts for Justice Blogging

FINAL EXAM DUE TO BB AT 5:00pm OF OUR EXAM DAY.

Agri-food issues

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