ANTHROPOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENT:

NATURE, SCIENCE, and POLITICS

TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS

10:00 AM-12:00 PM

SHANNON CRAM
scram@berkeley.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:00-4:00 pm
575 McCone Hall

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course explores the social and political boundaries of nature, science, and the human. We
begin with the premise that the natural world is not a passive backdrop for social and cultural
formation, focusing instead on the entangled relations between human and non-human realms.
Our aim is to enrich environmental research with a more extensive conceptual vocabulary1
unsettling dominant narratives in science and policy that rely upon mechanistic views of
environmental process and reductionist framings of rational, decision-making subjects. Using
critical insights from Anthropology, Geography, and Science and Technology Studies, we will
examine abstract theories of nature, culture, and power and ask critical questions about the
relationship between advocacy and activism, meaning and value, ethics and knowledge
production in the context of environmental change. Throughout the term, we will explore
debates surrounding issues like toxic exposure, racial identity, global warming, gender and
sexuality, waste, and value. We will consider the critical challenges of environmental decision
making, asking how it is possible to engage productively in both critique and action. Finally, by
considering the problems and potentialities of this moment, we will ask what futures are being
made possible.

1Chrulew, Matthew, Stuart Cooke, Matthew Kearnes, Emily OGorman, Deborah Rose, and Thom
Van Dooren. 2012. Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities Environmental
Humanities Volume 1.
PARTICIPATION AND ENGAGEMENT

This is a reading intensive and discussion heavy class, and your participation is vital to our
learning. Please come to class having read materials carefully and thoughtfully and be ready to
talk about them.

TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

If we are not engaged in an assignment where I am explicitly asking you to go online, please be
respectful and give the class your undivided attention. In other words, if you can type quietly,
laptops and other digital devices may be used for note taking only unless we are explicitly using
them for other class activities. Any other use can be distracting to your neighbors and may
result in your participation grade being lowered. You may not use your phone in the
classroomplease turn it off.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

Any test, paper, report or homework submitted under your name is presumed to be your own
original work that has not previously been submitted for credit in another course. All words and
ideas written by other people must be properly attributed: fully identified as to source and the
extent of your use of their work. Cheating, plagiarism and other academic misconduct will
result in a failing grade on the assignment, paper, quiz or exam in question and will be reported
to Student Judicial Affairs.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION

If you need academic accommodations for a disability, I will be happy to work with you. If this
is the case, please contact Disability Support Services (DSS) as soon as possible in the term.
You will need to provide documentation of your disability to DSS for review purposes.
Requests for accommodation must be provided to me after the documentation of your disability.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS

Weekly Photo Essays and Written Responses: Each Monday at the end of class, I will
give you a word or phrase relevant to what we will be covering for the rest of the week. For
example, I might give you a word like quantification or inequality or exposure. For the
rest of the week, I want you to keep that word or phrase in your mind as you go about your
day. When you see something that you think represents that word or phrase in the world
around you, take a quick picture of it with your smartphone.** You will use your best
photographic representations of that word or phrase to create a photo essay, due Monday of
each week.

A photo essay is a collection of images placed in a specific order to tell a story or communicate
a concept. Making a good photo essay takes some thought, and we will discuss expectations
and methods more deeply in class. Your success in designing an essay each week will depend
upon your dilligence in keeping up with course readings. You will find that doing the readings
early in the week gives you ideas for what photos you might want to takeand this will make it
easier for you to connect your images to course readings in your associated written responses
(see below). ** If you do not have a camera phone, that is not a problem. Please see me individually, and we
can come up with a good solution for you.

Each Monday, I will select one or two photo essays from the previous week for in-class
discussion, allowing us to review previous material and to integrate course themes from week to
week. Please come to class prepared to talk about your essay, what you found, and how you
designed your narrative. Your photo essays will be accompanied by a two-page (single-spaced)
description of the photos, your thinking behind them (sequence, narrative), and how they relate
directly to the readings for that week. These written responses are also due every Monday
night.

Keywords: During the term, you will submit two Keyword entries of 500 words each. We
will discuss the form and purpose of these Keyword entries at greater length in class, but they
will engage crucial terms brought up in course readings & discussion. Possible examples (meant
to be suggestive but by no means exhaustive) include: nature, culture, identity, biopower, community,
climate, counterinsurgency, cyborg, dispossession, environmental racism, slow violence,
naturalize, new materialism, mutant, indigenous, milieu, native, political ecology, pollution,
rainforest, sovereignty, territory, toxics, wilderness, nation, modern, futurity, threat. Keyword
entries will be shared with your classmates through the course website. Keyword entries will be
written collaboratively in small groups in order to encourage dialogue and discussion about
their meaning and how ideas are being represented. Entries will also be submitted first in rough
draft form first, and there will be time for discussion with the class as a wholeand then small
groups will incorporate comments and suggestions as needed into the final draft. Each group
will sign up to present their keyword entries throughout the term. I will provide a sign up sheet
during the first week of classes.

The Nature of KnowledgeInterview Assignment: For this assignment, you will work
in small groups to interview a faculty member on campus who is doing research about the
environment. Specially, you will design interview questions that ask how knowledge about the
environment is madehow researchers imagine and understand nature in their work, and
what choices they have to make in designing experiments and producing information about
environmental problems and issues. As part of this assignment, you will work as a group to
identify the environmental problem you would like to explore (be it biology, economics,
business, medicine, art, etc), you will contact the factulty member and arrange a time and place
to meet, and you will write thoughtful reflexive questions to ask in your interview. Afterward,
you will work in your small groups to discuss how best to communicate your findings in a
cohesive and interesting narrative. Finally, each member of the group will write an individual
7-10 page essay in response. We will discuss the specifics of this assignment at greater length in
class, but for now you may want to start doing research about other departments on campus
and to be thinking about what faculty member you might like to interview. I will provide time
in class for you to meet with your groups throughout the term.

Final Exam:
The final exam will take place during finals week and will rely upon short answer and essay
questions as well as photographic interpretation. I will hold a review session before the exam
(time and place to be determined).
GRADING

You will be graded on both the quality of your work as well as the timely completion of your
assignments. The basic breakdown for course grades is as follows:

Assignment Due Date Points Percentage of

Grade

Photo Essays and Every Monday 200 (20 pts each) 20%
Written Responses (except for weeks 2,
14, 15, & 16)

Keywords Entries TBD 200 (100 pts each) 20%

Interview Assignment December 4 350 35%

Final Exam December 9 250 25%

COURSE SCHEDULE

Please complete readings before the lecture for which they are assigned. Course readings have
been compiled into a reader which is available for purchase.

I. NATURE, CULTURE, AND POWER

Week OneIntroductions

Thursday, August 28Introductions

No readings are assigned for today

Week TwoThinking Nature

Tuesday, September 2Ideas of Nature

Williams, Raymond 1997 [1972] Ideas of Nature. In Problems in Materialism and Culture.
London: Verso, pp. 67-85.

Glacken, Clarence. 1960. Count Buffon on Changes in the Physical Environment. Annals of
the Association of American Geographers 50(1): 1-21.
Thursday, September 4Imagining Wilderness
Cronon, William 1996 The Trouble with Wilderness: or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.
Environmental History 1(1): 7-28.
Nash, Roderick. The Condition of Wilderness in Wilderness and the American Mind. Yale
University Press, 2001.

Week ThreeThe Nature in Natural History

Tuesday, September 9Natural Order

Lineuas, Carl 1767. Systema Naturae. Selections

Kant, Immanuel 1775. On the Different Races of Man. & On National Characteristics. In
Eze, Race and the Enlightenment. New York, Blackwell.

Pratt, M. L. 1992. Science and a Planetary Consciousness in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing
and Transculturation. London, Routledge (pp. 15-36).

Thursday, September 11Natural Order II

Prakash, Gyan. 1999. Staging Science in Another Reason. Princeton, Princeton University Press
(pp. 17-48).

Foucault, Michel Classifying The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences New York:
Random House (pp 125-157).

Week FourScience, Nature, and Difference

Tuesday, September 16The Science of Race

TallBear, Kimberly. 2007. Narratives on Race and Indigeneity in the Genographic Project.
Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 35(3): 412-424.

Stepan, Nancy Leys. 2009. Science and Race: Before and After the Human Genome Project
Socialist Register 39: 329-346.

Thursday, September 18The Gendered Ape

Schiebinger, Londa. 2004. The Gendered Ape in Natures Body: Gender in the Making of Modern
Science. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (pp 75-106).

Haraway, Donna. 1990. Womans Place is in the Jungle: in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and
Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge (pp 279-303).
Week FiveScience, Nature, and Difference II

Tuesday, September 23The Anatomy of Difference

Schiebinger, Londa. 2004. Why Mammals Are Called Mammals in Natures Body: Gender in the
Making of Modern Science. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (pp 40-74).
Fausto-Sterline, Anne. 2000. Dueling Dualisms in Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the
Construction of Sexuality New York: Basic Books (pp. 1-29).

Thursday, September 25Queer Ecologies

Terry, Jennifier. 2000. Unnatural Acts in Nature: The Scientific Fascination with Queer
Animals. GLQ : A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (2): 15193.

Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona and Bruce Erikson. 2010. A Genealogy of Queer Ecologies

in Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (pp. 1-39).

Week SixNature, Identity, and Belonging

Tuesday, September 30Nature and the Politics of Difference

Kosek, Jake. 2006. Introduction and Passionate Attachments and the Nature of Belonging
in Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico. Durham: Duke University
Press (pp. 1-29 and 103-141).

Thursday, October 2Environmentality

Agrawal, Arun 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of
Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press. Selections

Moore, D., Kosek, J. Pandian, A. 2003. Introduction Race, Nature and the Politics of
Difference. Durham, Duke University Press.

Week SevenNatures that Matter

Tuesday, October 7On Mattering and New Materialisms

Braun, Bruce. 2010. The Stuff of Politics in Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public
Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (pp. ix-xxv)

Latour, Bruno 2005. From Real Politik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public in
Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Latour, Bruno & Peter Weibel, eds.
Cambridge: MIT Press.

Thursday, October 9Multi-species intimacies

Kohn, Edwardo How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Trans-species
Engagement. American Ethnologist, Vol. 34, No.1 pp. 3-24.

Tsing, Anna. 2012. "Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species." Environmental

Humanities, vol. 1: 14154.
II. POLITICAL ECOLOGIES AND IMPERIAL ENTANGLEMENTS

Week EightWilderness, Nature, and Racialized Dispossession

Tuesday, October 14 Environmentalisms and Indigenous Politics

Baviskar, Amita 1997 Tribal Politics and Discourses of Environmentalism. Contributions to
Indian Sociology N.S. 31(2): 195-223.

Li, Tania Murray 2000 Constituting Tribal Space: Indigenous Identity and Resource Politics in
Indonesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(1): 149-179.

Thursday, October 16Conservation and Counterinsurgency

Ybarra, Megan 2012 Taming the Jungle, Saving the Maya Forest: Sedimented
Counterinsurgency Practices in Contemporary Guatemalan Conservation. Journal of
Peasant Studies 39 (2): 479-502.

Wainwright Joel and Joe Bryan. 2009. Cartography, Territory, Property: Postcolonial
Reflection on Indigenous Counter-mapping in Nicaragua and Belize. Cultural
Geographies 16(2): 153-178.

Week NineEnvironments of Exclusion

Tuesday, October 21Narratives of Protection

Neumman, Roderick P. 1998. Introduction and Landscapes of Nature, Terrains of
Resistance in Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa
Berkeley: University of California Press (pp 1-50).

Thursday, October 23Internal Colonialism

Kuletz, Valerie. 1998. Introduction and Tragedy at the Center of the Universe in The
Tainted Desert: Environmental Ruin in the American West Routledge (pp. 1-37).

Week TenWar and Nature

Tuesday, October 28Military Natures

Gonzlez, Roberto J. 2008 Human Terrain: Past, Present & Future Applications. Anthropology
Today 24(1): 21-26.

Redniss, Lauren. 2011. Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout. New York:
Harper Collins. Selections.

Thursday, October 30Ecologies of Empire

Kosek, Jake. 2010. "Ecologies of empire: on the new uses of the honeybee." Cultural Anthropology
25(4): 650-678.

Philip, Kavita 1998 English Mud: Towards a Critical Cultural Studies of Colonial Science.
 Cultural Studies 12 (3): 300-331.

Week ElevenMutant Ecologies and the Challenge of Deep Time

Tuesday, November 4Toxic Traces and the Nature of Change

Masco, Joseph. 2004. "Mutant Ecologies: Radioactive Life in PostCold War New Mexico."
Cultural Anthropology 19(4): 517-550.
Thursday, November 6Imagining the Future
Van Wyck, Peter. 2005. Signs of Danger: Waste, Trauma, and Nuclear Threat Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press (pp. 1-76).

III. SLOW VIOLENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Week TwelveSlow Disasters

Tuesday, November 11Environmental Racism

Pulido, Laura. 1996 A Critical Review of the Methodology of Environmental Racism. Antipode 28
(2):142-159.

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor Haverford College Press (pp. 1-44).

Thursday, November 13Environmental Justice and Urban Natures

Davis, Mike 1998 The Case for Letting Malibu Burn. In Ecology of Fear. New York:
Metropolitan Books (pp. 93-148).

Solnit, Rebecca 2009. On New Orleans. In A Paradise Built in Hell. New York: Viking (pp.
231-282).

Week ThirteenClimate Change, Chaos, and Gradual Catastrophe

Tuesday, November 18The Politics and Science of Global Warming

Conway, Erik and Naomi Oreskes, 2010. Denial of Global Warming in Merchants of Doubt (pp.
169-215).

Thursday, November 20Catastrophic Environmentalism

Masco, Joseph. 2014. Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis in The Theater of Operations: National
Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror Duke University Press (77-112).

Hamblin, Jacob. 2013. Introduction: Total War and Catastrophic Environmentalism in

Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (pp. 3-16).
Week Fourteen

Thanksgiving breakno classes!

Week FifteenVisions of the Anthropocene

Tuesday, December 2The Climate of History

Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2009. The Climate of History: Four Theses, Critical Inquiry 35

Weisman, Alan. 2007. The World Without Us. St. Martins Press. (pp. 1-38).

Tuesday, December 4
Crist, Eileen. 2013. On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature Environmental Humanities 3: 129-
147.

Solnit, Rebecca. 2004. Hope in the Dark: Untold Stories, Wild Possibilities. New York, Verso. (pp. 1-26).

Week Sixteen

Reading, Review, Recitation Week

FINAL EXAM: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9