← Back to course website “Global Challenges and Sustainable Futures”

Here you can find the weekly readings that you need to prepare before we come together in the course. Please read and watch all the articles, book excerpts and videos that you can find under “Mandatory Reading/Watching”. Please keep the guiding questions for each week in mind when reading. You don’t need to answer the questions on your own, they just serve as the basis for discussions in class. Under “Further Reading”, you can find other material that you can dig into, if you are interested in the topic.

August 29th: We are Global Challenges and Sustainable Futures

Guiding Questions:

• How do the authors and speakers in the literature think we as individuals should behave in order to create sustainable futures?
• What is the relationship between individuals and the larger structures of society in relation to change?

Mandatory Reading/Watching:

• Massey, G., 2016. Way of Social Change. Making Sense of Modern Times. Thousand Oaks/London/New Delhi/Singapore: Sage Publications, pp. 80-81.
• Crompton, T., & Thøgersen, J., 2009. Simple & painless. The limitations of spillover in environmental campaigning. WWF-UK’s Strategies for Change Project, pp. 6-8.
• Leonard, A., 2012. Individual Actions Just Don’t Add Up to Environmental Change. The New York Times, 14 Dec.

Further Reading/Watching:

• Crompton, T., & Thøgersen, J.  2009. Simple & painless. The limitations of spillover in environmental campaigning. WWF-UK’s Strategies for Change Project.
• No Impact Man. Documentary film, 2009.

Sep 5: Introduction to Sustainabilities: Worldviews and discourses on change

Guiding Questions:

• What is ‘sustainable development’? Look at different ways to understand it.
• What is a discourse? Why is it useful to look at discourses to understand the ‘Earth’s politics’, according to Dryzek?

Mandatory Reading/Watching:

• Hopwood, B., Mellor, M. and Brien, G.O., 2005. Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches. Sustainable Development, 13, pp. 38–52.
• Dryzek, J., 2013. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-23 (Part I: Introduction).

Further Reading/Watching:

• Girardet, H., 2013. Sustainability is unhelpful: we need to think about regeneration. The Guardian, 10 Jun.
• Dryzek, J., 2013. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 73-142 (Part III: Solving Environmental Problems).

Sep 12: Looking deeper: Indigenous perspectives on Diversity

Guiding Questions:

• Why are we losing diversity?
• How are cultural diversity and biodiversity connected? What could be problematic about making this connection?
• What challenges are Indigenous Peoples facing?

* Bring questions that you would like to ask the our guest, Myrna Cunningham! The Skype conversation will be a Q&A session with our class.

Mandatory Reading/Watching:

Context:

• UNDESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs), 2009. Chapter 2: Culture. In: State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. New York: United Naitons, pp. 52-81.
• Robbins., P., Hintz, J., Moore, S.A., 2010. Wilderness: A troublesome discourse. In: Environment and Society. A Critical Introduction. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 127-128.
• Gorenflo, L.J., Romaine, S., Mittermeier, R.A. and Walker-Painemilla, K., 2012. Co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity in biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (21), pp. 8032–8037.

Case:

• Robles, F., 2016. Nicaragua Dispute Over Indigenous Land Erupts in Wave of Killings. The New York Times, 16 Oct.
• Mirna Cunningham’s Biography

Further Reading/Watching:

• UNDESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs), 2009. State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. New York: United Naitons, pp. 84-98, 107-120.
• AtKisson, A., 2017. Why “Ocean is the New Climate”. SDG14.net [blog], 15 May.

Sep 19: Democracy: What’s sustainability got to do with it?

Guiding Questions:

• What’s sustainable about democracy? Is democracy too slow for sustainability? What are anti-democratic visions of sustainable futures?
• What challenges do we face now and in the future concerning democracy?
• In what better ways can we organize democracy?

Mandatory Reading/Watching:

Context:

• Della Porta, D., 2013: Can Democracy Be Saved?. Chapters 1 and 2.

Cases:

• About political frustration among the working class in France – Eribon, D., 2013: Returning to Reims. Los Angeles: Semiotext, p. 125-126, 130-134, 137-144. (In this book, Didier Eribon talks about how his working class family gradually shifted from voting for the Communist Party due to their strong identity as workers to voting for the right-wing extremist Front National out of political frustration).
• About participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre (Brazil) – Patel, R., 2010. The Value of Nothing. New York: Picador, p. 147-150.

Suggested Watching by Student-Led Session Group:

Further Reading/Watching:

• Eribon, D., 2013: Returning to Reims. Los Angeles: Semiotext, p. 125-155. (If you want to read the complete text without interruptions instead).
• Korbik, J., Mouffe, C., 2014. “Populism is a necessity”. The European, 15 Jan. (The political scientist Chantal Mouffe on right-wing populism in Europe and how it is connected to political frustration).
• Dahl, Robert A. (1994). ”A Democratic Dilemma: System Effectiveness versus Citizen Participation”. Political Science Quarterly Vol. 109 No. 1.
• Smith, G. (2003). Deliberative democracy and the environment. Psychology Press. (e-book at UU).
• Dalton, R. J. (2008). Citizenship norms and the expansion of political participation. Political studies, 56(1), 76-98.
• Archibugi, D. et al. (2010). ”Global Democracy: A Symposium on a New Political Hope”, New Political Science, Vol 32, No 1.
• Brown, Wendy. (2015). Undoing the demos. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (e-book at UU).

Sep 26: Framing the Apocalypse: Analysing “Collapse of the Western Civilization”

Guiding Questions: see Entrance Ticket for the Seminar

Mandatory Reading/Watching:

• Foust, C.R. and O’Shannon Murphy, W., 2009: Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse. Environmental Communication, 3:2, pp. 151-167.
• Lakoff, G., 2010: Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment. Environmental Communication, 4:1, pp. 70-81.
• Swyngedouw, E., 2010: Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), p. 213 (title page), pp. 216-220.

Further Reading/Watching:

• Swyngedouw, E., 2010: Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), p. 213 (title page), pp. 213–232.