Week 1 Introduction & Logistics

Week 2            Anthropocene & Global Sustainable Advocacy

Reference Readings

1. Sexsmith, K., & P, McMichael. (2015). ‘Formulating the SDGs: Reproducing or Reimagining State-Centered Development?’. Globalizations, 12(4), 581–596.


2. Lele, S. M. (1991). ‘Sustainable Development: A Critical Review’. World Development, 19(6), 607-621.


3. Scoville-Simonds, Morgan. 2018. Climate, the Earth, and God – Entangled narratives of cultural and climatic change in the Peruvian Andes. World Development 110: 345-359.

Week 3  Climate Change & Circular Economy

Required Readings

1. Reike, D., Vermeulena, W., & Witjes, S. (2018). The circular economy: new or refurbished as CE 3.0? — exploring controversies in the conceptualization of the circular economy through a focus on history and resource value retention options. Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 135, 246–264.


2. Schröder, P., Lemille, A., & Desmond, P. (2020). Making the circular economy work for human development. Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 156.

Further Reading

Adger, W. N. (2001). ‘Scales of governance and environmental justice for adaptation and mitigation of climate change’. Journal of international development, 13 (7), 921-931.

Week 4  Emotion & Morality

Required Readings

1. Tanya Jakimow (2022) Understanding power in development studies through emotion and affect: promising lines of enquiry, Third World Quarterly, 43:3, 513-524.


2. Qizilbash, Mozaffar. 1996. Ethical development, World Development 24 (7): 1209-1221.

Further Reading

Sochanny Hak, Yvonne Underhill-Sem & Chanrith Ngin (2022) Indigenous peoples’ responses to land exclusions: emotions, affective links and power relations, Third World Quarterly, 43:3, 525-542.

Week 5            Food & Agriculture

Required Readings

1. Myers, S et al. (2017). ‘Climate change and global food systems: potential impacts on food security and undernutrition’. Ann Rev Public Health, 38, 259-277.


2. María Elena Martínez-Torres & Peter, M. Rosset. (2014). ‘Diálogo de saberes in La Vía Campesina: Food sovereignty and agroecology’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 979–997.

Further Reading

Ho, Hao-Tzu. 2019. Cosmopolitan Locavorism: Global Local-food Movements in Postcolonial Hong Kong. Food, Culture & Society 23(2): 137-154.

Week 6            Energy & Off-grid Initiatives

Required Readings

1. Winther, T., & Wilhite, H. (2015). ‘Tentacles of Modernity: Why Electricity Needs Anthropology’. Cultural Anthropology, 30(4), 569–577.


2. Campbell, B., J. Cloke, & E. Brown. (2016). ‘Communities of Energy’. Economic Anthropology, 3(1), 133–144.

Further Reading

Henning, Annette. (2005). ‘Climate Change and Energy Use’. Anthropology Today, 21(3), 8-12.

Week 7            Water

Required Readings

1. Strang, V. (2014). ‘The Taniwha and the Crown: defending water rights in Aotearoa/New Zealand’. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews: water, 1 (1). 121-131.


2. Nupur Joshi, Andrea K. Gerlak, Corrie Hannah, Sara Lopus, Natasha Krell, Tom Evans. 2023. Water insecurity, housing tenure, and the role of informal water services in Nairobi’s slum settlements. World Development 164, 106165.

Further Reading

François Molle (2009). Water, politics and river basin governance: repoliticizing approaches to river basin management, Water International, 34:1, 62-70.

Week 8            ESG, CSR & Gender (Guest Speech)

Required Readings

1. Kuokkanen, Rauna. (2011). Indigenous Economies, Theories of Subsistence, and Women: Exploring the Social Economy Model for Indigenous Governance. American Indian Quarterly, 35 (2), 215-240.


2. Archer, M. (2022). The ethics of ESG, Focaal, 2022(93), 18-31.

Further Reading

Blowfield, M. (2005). Corporate Social Responsibility: Reinventing the Meaning of Development? International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), 81(3), 515–524.

Week 9            Environmental Migration, Refugee, Activism and Justice

Required Readings

1. Marino, E., & Lazrus, H. (2015). Migration or Forced Displacement? The Complex Choices of Climate Change and Disaster Migrants in Shishmaref, Alaska and Nanumea, Tuvalu. Human Organization, 74(4), 341–350.


2. Checker, M. (2007). “But I Know It’s True”: Environmental Risk Assessment, Justice, and Anthropology. Human Organization, 66(2), 112–124.

Further Reading

Campbell, Ben. (2005). ‘Changing Protection Policies and Ethnographies of Environmental Engagement’. Conservation and Society, 3(2), 280–322.

Week 10          Waste & Recycling

Required Readings

1. Alexander, C and Reno, J.O (2020). 'Global entanglements of recycling policy and practice.', in Oxford research encyclopaedia of anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


2. Laura Siragusa, Dmitry Arzyutov (2020). Nothing goes to waste: sustainable practices of re-use among Indigenous groups in the Russian North, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 43, 41-48.

Further Reading

Judith Schlehe & Vissia Ita Yulianto (2020). An anthropology of waste, Indonesia and the Malay World, 48:140, 40-59.

Week 11           Folk Approaches, Indigenous Knowledge, and Innovative Technology

Required Readings

1. DePuy, Walker. 2023. Seeing like a smartphone: The co-production of landscape-scale and rights-based conservation. World Development, Volume 164, 106181.


2. Andrea M Vásquez-Fernández, Cash Ahenakew pii tai poo taa. 2020. Resurgence of relationality: reflections on decolonizing and indigenizing ‘sustainable development’. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 43: 65-70.

Further Reading

Rivera-Gonzalez, Joyce, Jennifer Trivedi, Elizabeth K. Marino, and Alexa Dietrich. 2022. "Imagining an Ethnographic Otherwise during a Pandemic." Human Organization 81 (3): 291-300.

Week 12          Resilience, Eco-village, and Alternative Settlements

Required Readings

1. Siobhan McDonnell (2020) Other Dark Sides of Resilience: Politics and Power in Community-Based Efforts to Strengthen Resilience, Anthropological Forum, 30:1-2, 55-72.


2. Jung, Shaw-Wu. 2016. Landscapes and governance: practicing citizenship in the construction of an eco-village in Taiwan, Citizenship Studies, 20:3-4, 510-526.

Further Reading

Neal, S. (2013). Transition Culture: Politics, Localities and Ruralities. Journal of Rural Studies, 32, 60-69.

Week 13          Global Health

Required Readings

1. Brown, T. M., Cueto, M., & Fee, E. (2006). ‘The World Health Organization and the transition from ‘International’ to ‘Global’ public health’. American Journal of Public Health, 96(1), 1-11.


2. Kleinman, A. (2010). ‘The art of medicine: Four social theories for global health’. Lancet, 375, 1518-9.

Further Reading

Pigg, Stacy Leigh. (2013). ‘On sitting and doing: Ethnography as action in global health’. Social Science & Medicine, 99, 127-134.

Week 14          University Sports Day. No class.

Week 15          Mental Health, Happiness, and Well-being

Required Readings

1. Cook, Samantha, Laurie Richmond, Jocelyn Enevoldsen, Kelly Sayce, Rachelle Fisher, Cheryl Chen, Jon Bonkoski, Denise Chin, Joice Chang, and Mikayla Kia. 2022. "The Zoom Where it Happens: Using a Virtual, Mixed-Methods Focus Group Approach to Assess Community Well-being in Natural Resource Contexts." Human Organization 81 (3): 248-270.


2. Mariana Piva da Silva, James A. Fraser, Luke Parry. 2022. From ‘prison’ to ‘paradise’? Seeking freedom at the rainforest frontier through urban–rural migration. World Development 160, 106077.

Further Reading

Mathews, G. (2012). ‘Happiness, culture, and context’. International Journal of Wellbeing 2, 299–312.

Week 16          Documentary Screening. (Instructor departs for a conference.)  

Week 17          Flexible Supplementary Teaching Week: Completing the Term Paper.

Week 18          Flexible Supplementary Teaching Week: Submit the Term Paper.

1. Group oral presentation (30%)


2. Attendance & participation in discussion (40%)


3. Individual final project (30%)

1. Redclift, M. (1987). Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions. London: Methuen.


2. Lee, K., Holland, A., & McNeill, D. (2000). Global Sustainable Development in the 21st Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.  


3. Oosterveer, P., & Sonnenfeld, D. A. (2012). Food, Globalization and Sustainability. New York: Earthscan.


4. Crewe, E., & Axelby, R. (2013). Anthropology and Development: Culture, Morality and Politics in a Globalised World. Cambridge University Press.


5. Tsing, A. (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet: ghosts and monsters of the anthropocene. London: University of Minnesota Press.


6. Leach, M., Scoones, I., & Stirling, A. (2010). Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice. London: Earthscan.