Greetings to all!
For my 0.2 cents, I am often horrified at the lack of awareness of
non-European cultures which were very close to sustainability, as far as
we can tell. There is, of course, an enormous emotional pressure
supporting ideas such as "They're just as bad as we are... they just
didn't have the technology to destroy everything like we do." And,
somewhat more sophisticated, "They might have gone on a long time, but
they had a miserable quality of life... lacked (fill-in-the-blank)...
etc."
Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to counter such things? Poli
Sci seems nearly anthropology-free sometimes. I wonder how to bridge
the gap between Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, and the ethnographies
(e.g. work on Alaskan villages in apparently (archaeologically
observably) continually-occupied sites for many thousands of years.
Obviously, some non-European cultures and groups were radically
unsustainable, e.g. self-destructive agricultural systems (like ours),
but some people were not making such mistakes. Is there a good item on
this?
Best wishes and thanks to all -- GEP-Ed is a remarkable group of very
productive folks!
John Wiener
Katrina Z. S. Schwartz wrote:
Dear colleagues -
I am drafting a proposal for a new course on "Politics &
Sustainability" that would be a core course for a proposed new
interdisciplinary major in Sustainability Studies at the University of
Florida. This would be an introductory-level course, and would
probably also serve as the prerequisite for existing upper-division
polisci courses in environmental politics.
Does any of you teach a course like this, or have any thoughts about
how such a course might differ from an introductory "Environmental
Politics" course, what topics you would cover etc?
thanks,
Katrina
--
Katrina Z. S. Schwartz
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Florida
234 Anderson Hall, P.O. Box 117325
Gainesville, FL 32611-7325
Tel.: (352) 273-2371
Fax: (352) 392-8127
email: [email protected]
homepage: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/kzss/
<http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/kschwart/>
