All classes taught live from Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau. Synchronous delivery to any location/computer upon request.
FISH 411/611: Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems (offered every fall)
This course explores the social and cultural dimensions of environmental systems. We will examine the relationships between humans and the environment historically and cross-culturally. The course is organized into three units: 1) foundations of human/environment relationships, 2) systems of knowledge, and 3) resource management. Students will gain an understanding of the ways in which social scientists study social-ecological relationships and the ways in which these data inform resource management. We will focus on specific theoretical traditions, including: historical ecology, cultural ecology, ecological anthropology, political ecology, traditional ecological knowledge, and property theory. This course will be a mixture of lectures and seminar discussions. Students are expected to come to class ready to discuss the readings assigned for the day.
ANTH/FISH 412/613: Human-Environment Research Methods (offered fall, odd years)
This course provides an overview of qualitative and quantitative social science methods for studying human-environment relationships. Students will be introduced to research ethics, research design, data collection, data analysis, and data reporting. Specific methods and data analysis techniques to be covered include: interviews, discourse and text analysis, surveys, scales and scaling, cognitive anthropology and ethnoecology, social networks, behavioral observation, and visual methods. The course will be a mixture of lectures, class discussion, and guided hands-on training in methods of data collection and data analysis. Students will be introduced to analytic software, including: Atlas.ti, UCINET, and Anthropac. Students will work independently and in small groups to carry out research and analysis in a series of class projects. Using one or more of the methods and analytical techniques introduced in the course, students will design and conduct an original research project and present their results.
ANTH/FISH: 675: Political Ecology of the Oceans (offered fall, even years)
This course provides an introduction to the field of political ecology, with an empirical focus on marine fisheries and conservation. Political ecologists examine the social and political dimensions of environmental problems and conflicts. In this course, we begin by tracing the genealogy of the field and defining key concepts. We next survey recent publications in marine political ecology. We shift for the rest of the semester to explore consistent themes in political ecology. We will survey the debates concerning the privatization of fishing rights and the use of marine reserves for conservation and development. We critically examine the drivers of these processes of enclosure and the social impacts brought about by such changes in marine governance. Next, we explore environmental values, marine conservation, and resource-dependent livelihoods. What does it mean to conserve the marine environment? How do global networks of power affect marine environments and those that depend on natural resources for livelihood? How do groups negotiate conflicts over access to marine resources? What is environmental justice and how do we work to achieve it? We will spend several weeks thinking about place and the local to global connections that define them. Throughout the course we explore detailed case studies that use a political ecology framework to understand human-environment relationships.