Capitalism, Nature, and Democracy
SOC-STD 98WP
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Course Information
Description
Although “nature” often appears as the most fixed and self-evident category in social and political thought, its meaning, like other foundational concepts, has been historically constructed and politically contested. This course examines how ideas of nature have been shaped by capitalist accumulation imperatives, and how those transformations bear on contemporary ecological problems, including climate change. In light of these inquiries, we also ask whether “denaturalizing” social categories should be the primary aim of social theory.
We begin with nineteenth-century debates, including selections from William Apess, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, and Henry David Thoreau, and ask how industrial society altered understandings of the human relation to the natural world and the conditions of collective self-determination. Contemporary readings revisit and revise these traditions under conditions of planetary crisis and include approaches such as degrowth, Green and Red New Deals, ecofeminism, and Indigenous political theory. Recent authors include Jane Bennett, Alyssa Battistoni, Kohei Saito, Kate Soper, John Bellamy Foster, Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Red Nation, and Kyle Powys Whyte.
Course Notes
This course will be lotteried and is open to non-concentrators if space permits. This course must be taken for a Letter Grade and cannot be taken Pass/Fail.
School
Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Credits
4
Cross Reg
Not Available for Cross Registration
Department
Social Studies
Course Component
Tutorial
General Education
N/A
Quantitative Reasoning with Data
N/A
Divisional Distribution
Social Sciences
Course Level
Primarily for Undergraduate Students
