136-527 Ecology and the Environmental Movement

Students who have completed 136-419 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours, or a postgraduate coursework program.

This subject examines the emergence of ecology during the last century - a period of unprecedented transformation in both the environment and the sciences created to interpret these changes. Students will explore the instrumental ecological ideas of geography, natural history, plant succession, ecosystem ecology, the Gaia hypothesis, and chaos ecology. In the field of environmental thought, students will examine conservation, green politics, deep ecology, ecofeminism, environmental racism and justice, and bioethics. Specific case studies will focus on ecological investigations of human systems including nuclear fallout, introduced species and pests, deforestation, and overpopulation. The sources will range from ecological papers and field studies to popular films, books and articles on environmental thought. This subject should be of interest to students wishing to learn more about the historically complex relationship between the world we inhabit and the ways in which we understand our world.

Written work totalling 5000 words.

• D Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 1995.
• W Cronon (ed), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. 1996.