ETHNOGRAPHY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES-2

The course is primarily addressed to students of the Master Degree in Environmental Humanities who have already passed 'Environmental Anthropology 1', mod.1 and 2. The participation of students of other programmes can be authorised upon agreement with the instructors.

The course will provide students with the practical tools, theoretical knowledge and basic skills to plan and carry out anthropological/ethnographic research. The skills and knowledge acquired during this course will help direct and conduct field research in its initial stages and facilitate the analysis of ethnographic data. Furthermore, the course will clarify the difference between anthropological/ethnographic research and other types of research, clarifying to students the complementarity of the various methodological and theoretical approaches offered by the entire interdisciplinary master's degree course, best equipping them for their future professional's path thanks to the acquired ability to discern and choose the most appropriate methodology, in relation to their needs, interests and sensitivities.

Environmental Anthropology 1, mod.1 and 2.

The course will address the study of environmental anthropology through the exploration and critical discussion of some of the concepts that currently run through the discipline, and in particular those of: plantationocene, political ontology, rights of nature, slow and structural violence, agro-bio-politics. A part of the course will moreover be dedicated to extractivism, its links with colonialism and contemporary forms of resistance.

The final selection of articles will be provided at the beginning of the course.

De la Cadena, Marisol. (2010) "Indigenous cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual
reflections beyond “politics”." Cultural anthropology 25.2: 334-370.

Weiss, Erica. (2016) "‘There are no chickens in suicide vests’: the decoupling of human
rights and animal rights in Israel." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22.3:
688-706.

Hetherington, Kregg. (2013) "Beans before the law: Knowledge practices,
responsibility, and the Paraguayan soy boom." Cultural Anthropology 28.1: 65-85.

Chao, Sophie. (2018) "In the shadow of the palm: dispersed ontologies among Marind,
West Papua." Cultural Anthropology 33.4: 621-649.

Blanchette, A. (2015) Herding species: Biosecurity, posthuman labor, and the American
industrial pig. Cultural Anthropology, 30(4), 640-669.

Bonifacio, Valentina (2023) Of feral and obedient cows: colonization as domestication
in the Paraguayan Chaco. Cultural Anthropology.

Beilin, K. O., & Suryanarayanan, S. (2017) The war between amaranth and soy:
Interspecies resistance to transgenic soy agriculture in Argentina. Environmental
Humanities, 9(2), 204-229.

Wolford, Wendy. "The Plantationocene: A lusotropical contribution to the theory." Annals of
the American Association of Geographers 111.6 (2021): 1622-1639.

Evaluation of a proposal of an ethnographic research project (between 3,000 and 5,000 words, including bibliography) on a topic of your choice related to environmental issues. More information on how to set up the writing is available on Moodle.

written

The final grade will be based on the final essay and on students' ability to incorporate the main concepts as presented in the available literature.

The course includes short lectures, and supervised class discussions.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Natural capital and environmental quality" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development