Climate change is considered as amongst the most pressing of current threats to humanity, to the planet and to life at large, now and in the future. The course approaches the issue of climate change, the relationship between climate change and health from an anthropological perspective.
It follows and critically studies the concepts that are mobilized in the context of climate change, dealing, for example, with the relation between humans and the environments, between nature and culture, with risk, with the relation between local worlds and the globalized world, etc. How can anthropology contribute to the ongoing discussions about climate change?
Themes – Course structure:
- Introductory discussion
- Key concepts – the Anthropocene concept
- Anthropologically approaching the Anthropocene concept
- Environmental anthropology. Theoretical trajectories and key approaches
- Environmental anthropology. Key ethnographic case studies.
- Studying environmentalism
- The emergence of an anthropology of Climate Change
- Ethnographic case studies I
- Ethnographic case studies II
- Anthropology, Climate Change and Health I
- Anthropology, Climate Change and Health II
Learning outcomes: The aim of the course is to:
a). Become familiar with the anthropological approaches and the ethnographic works focusing on the study of climate change in glocal contexts.
b). Focus on the relationship between climate change, inequality, health and wellbeing, politics.
c). Become familiar with the contemporary discourses, theoretical discussions, anthropological and cross-disciplinary undertakings dealing with climate change.
General Competences:
– Working Independently
– Production of new research ideas
– Criticism and self-criticism
– Production of free, creative and inductive thinking
– Suggested syllabi:
Mostly notes
• Ingold, Tim. 2016 (ελληνική έκδοση). Η αντίληψη του Περιβάλλοντος. Δοκίμια για τη διαβίωση, την κατοίκηση και τις δεξιότητες. Αλεξάνδρεια.
• Doulgas, Mary 1992. Risk and Blame. Essays in Cultural Theory. Routledge.
• Douglas, Mary, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1983. Risk and Culture. An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers. University of California Press.
– Suggested general bibliography:
• Latour, Bruno. 2018. Down to Earth. Politics in the New Climate Regime. Polity Press.
• Latour, Bruno. 2017. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press.
• Palsson, Gisli. 2020. The Human Age. How we created the Anthropocene epoch and caused the climate crisis. Welbeck
• Palsson, Gisli. 2016. Nature, Culture and Society. Anthropological Perspectives on Life. Cambridge University Press.
• Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, 2016. Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change. Pluto Press.
• Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (Editor). 2018. An Overheated World. An Anthropological History of the Early Twentyfirst Century. Routledge.
• Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. University of Chicago Press.
• Crate, Susan. A. and Nutall, Mark. 2009. Anthropology and Climate Change. From Encounters to Actions. Left Coast Press.
• Haenn, Nora and Wilk R. Richard. 2006. The Environment in Anthropology. A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living. New York University Press.
• Dove, Michael, R. and Carpenter Carol. 2008. Environmental Anthropology. A Historical Reader. Blackwell Publishing.
• Ingold, Tim. 2016 (ελληνική έκδοση). Η αντίληψη του Περιβάλλοντος. Δοκίμια για τη διαβίωση, την κατοίκηση και τις δεξιότητες. Αλεξάνδρεια.
• Doulgas, Mary 1992. Risk and Blame. Essays in Cultural Theory. Routledge.
• Douglas, Mary, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1983. Risk and Culture. An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers. University of California Press.
• Milton, Kay. 1996. Environmentalism and Cultural Theory. Exploring the role of anthropology in environmental discourse. Routledge.
• Elizabeth Cartwright (2019) The Medical Anthropology of Climate Change: Eco-Risks and the Body Environmental, Medical Anthropology, 38:5, 436-439.
• Baer, H. A. 2008 Toward a critical anthropology on the impact of global warming on health and human societies. Medical Anthropology 27(1):2–8.
• Samet, J. M. and A. Woodward 2018 National government denial of climate change and state and local public health action in a federalist system. American Journal of Public Health 108(S2): S112–S113.
• Singer, M., ed. 2016 A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
• Singer, M., J. Hasemann, and A. Raynor 2016 “I feel suffocated:” Understandings of climate change in an inner city heat island. Medical Anthropology 35(6):453–463.
• Trostle, J. 2010 Anthropology is missing: On the world development report 2010: Development and climate change. Medical Anthropology 29(3):217–225.
• Wainwright, M. 2017 Sensing the airs: The cultural context for breathing and breathlessness in Uruguay. Medical Anthropology 36(4):332–347.
