Course Syllabus GGR438 - Department of Geography - University of ...

GGR438 Fall 2013

Department of Geography, University of Toronto GGR438H1F: Environment and Development Meeting time: Thursdays 12-2 Meeting place: UC 376 Instructor: Office hours: Email:

Jessica Wilczak Thursdays 4-5 or by appointment in my office at SSH 5027A [email protected]

The destruction of nature is not primarily an ethical issue that can be cured through moral resolve to live simpler and re-cycle more… Instead the ecology of destruction results from an alienated form of the production of human existence, one that is not democratically controlled, that is organized indirectly through markets, that is based in the self-interested pursuit of profit, and that has to grow to survive. If we want to understand what is happening to the environment, we have to understand the origins, development, structure and dynamics of capitalism: its systematic imperatives. - Peet et al. (2010), p.16 * Note: This syllabus is subject to change with the agreement of a simple majority of the class. 1. Course description This is a fourth-year course that examines the implications of ‘development’—as both a deliberate political project and an immanent economic process—for the environment. How is the environment defined, valued, and used? By whom? To what ends? To answer these questions, we will draw on a growing body of geographical literature that addresses the links between power, environment, and development, with a focus on the contributions of political ecology and critical development studies. Course readings will include the following topics: interpretations of scarcity and degradation; questions of consumption; the greening of development; and the formation of social movements and participatory initiatives at the interface of development and the environment. The two basic ‘learning outcomes’ for this course involve asking good questions and producing good writing. First, you will strengthen your ability to engage with other writers by asking critical (but generative and generous) questions in a seminar setting. Second, you will acquire a hands-on understanding of the conventions of academic writing by developing your own polished research paper in several stages. My overall intent is for you to see yourselves as active contributors to an academic community. This class will be run as an advanced seminar course. I expect you to participate actively in class discussions, submit questions and reading responses, and produce an original research project that you will work on over the course of the term. This will require a significant weekly time commitment, and you should not attempt this course until you have completed two years of full-time study or the equivalent number of credits part-time (10 FCEs (Full Course Equivalents)).

2. Course materials * Readings: There is no required textbook for the course; I have drawn the readings from peer-reviewed journals and books. For those readings that not available online, I will provide scanned electronic versions through the course Blackboard site. You are responsible for finding the other readings on your own through the Library website (see 4. Breakdown of course them es). I expect you to read the assigned pieces before each class and email weekly questions to me. You will also submit two to three reading responses over the term (see 5.Assessm ent and deadlines). Page 1 of 6

GGR438 Fall 2013

* Blackboard: We will make heavy use of Blackboard during this course: learn to love it! First, you will submit your written assignments to me through Blackboard under the Assignm ent Submissions tab (see 6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin). Second, I will post some of the readings for the class under the Class Readings tab. Finally, I will post Course Announcem ents throughout the term on the Blackboard home page for the course, which will also send an alert to your utoronto email address. To receive these emails and to make assignment submissions, you must check that the email address ROSI has listed for you is a utoronto email address. I will assume that everyone has done this and thus will be able to receive such messages. You can check your U of T email account by going to the main U of T website and clicking on “Webmail”: http://www.utoronto.ca/. You can access Blackboard by going to the same site and clicking on “Portal”. Once you have registered in the course through ROSI, it may take a day for the course to appear on your Portal so that you can access the course Blackboard page. If this takes longer than that, please email me. All the information you should need to activate your account, as well as a Blackboard orientation video, is available at: http://www.portalinfo.utoronto.ca/content/information-students. 3. Expectations * Electronic devices: All cellphones must be set on silent during class: if there is a pressing matter that requires your immediate attention, please leave the classroom in order to text or talk. If you wish to record any part of the class please get permission from me first. I am going to suggest (but not require) that you leave your laptops at home and use old-fashioned pen and paper to take notes during class. Laptops disrupt the flow of conversation, and research indicates that the use of electronic devices during class not only lowers the grades of the users, but the grades of those around them as well. If you wish to use a laptop, I am going to ask you to stay offline. Updating your Facebook status or conducting any other online activity during class will lower your participation grade. * Email etiquette: Email correspondence should be carried out in a professional and courteous manner. I will respond to emails within two working days. I will generally not respond to emails on weekends or after regular work hours (9 am to 5 pm). If your question requires a long and complex response, it’s probably best to speak with me after class or during office hours. * Late assignments: No late submissions will be accepted for the weekly ‘three questions’ or the ‘onepage responses.’ I will deduct 5% per day for late assignments (including 5% on Saturday and 5% on Sunday) unless you provide a doctor’s note or have received an extension from me beforehand. I will not accept assignments more than one week after the due date unless you have obtained prior permission from me in the case of documented illness or other extenuating circumstances (see next point). * Extensions and missed tests: Extensions on assignments will be granted sparingly in the case of illness or other emergencies. For illness, you must have a health care professional fill out the official University of Toronto medical certificate. Please consult your College Registrar if you are having difficulties during the term that prevent you from completing your course work. If you miss the test due to illness or other emergency, email me as soon as possible, no later than one week from the date of the test.

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4. Breakdown of course themes The first half of the course interrogates the terms ‘Nature’ and ‘D/development’, and introduces you to the fields of critical development studies and political ecology. The intent is to get everyone on the same page for more in-depth discussions in the second half of the course. [E] = Available electronically through the library website [S] = I will scan a copy and post it on the Blackboard site (generally book chapters) Class 1 | Septem ber 12 | Course introduction • Please confirm you are registered on Blackboard. Class 2 | Septem ber 19 | Producing Nature • Neum ann, R. (1995) Ways of Seeing Africa: Colonial Recasting of African Society and Landscape in Serengeti National Park. Ecumene, 2(2), 149-169. [E] • Dryzek, J. (1997) Making Sense of Earth’s Politics: A Discourse Approach. In The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (3-20). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [S] • W orld Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Towards Sustainable Development, from Our Common Future, In The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (53-57). London: Routledge. [S] • Escobar, A. (1995) Sustainable Development: The Death of Nature and the Rise of the Environment. Excerpt from Chapter 5, Power and Visibility: Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment, from Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (192199). Princeton: Princeton University Press. [S] Class 3 | Septem ber 26 | Producing Developm ent • Escobar, A. (1995) Chapter 2, The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development, from Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (2131). Princeton: Princeton University Press. [S] • Frank, A.G. (2004) The Development of Underdevelopment, in Wheeler, S. and Beatley, T. The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (38-41). London: Routledge. [S] • Power, M . (2003) Development Thinking and the Mystical ‘Kingdom of Abundance’, from Rethinking Development Geographies (71-94). New York: Routledge. [S] Class 4 | October 3 | Critiques of D/development • Shrestha, N. (1995) Becoming a Development Category. In Crush (Ed.) Power of Development (266-277). London: Routledge. [E] • Hart, G. (2001). Development critiques in the 1990s: culs de sac and promising paths. Progress in Human Geography, 25(4), 649-658. [E] • Jones, P.S. (2000) Why Is it Alright to Develop ‘Over There’, but not ‘Here’? Area, 32(2), 237-241. [E] Class 5 | October 10 | Political ecology ‘then and there’ • Blaikie, P. and H. Brookfield (1987) Approaches to the Study of Land Degradation. In Land Degradation and Society (27-48). London: Methuen. [S] • Bryant, R.L. (1992). Political Ecology: An Emerging Research Agenda in Third-World Studies. Political Geography, 11, 12-36. [E] • Robbins, P. (2004) The Hatchet and the Seed. In Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (3-16). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. • Vayda , A. and B. W alters (1999) Against Political Ecology, Human Ecology, 27 (1), 167-179. [E]

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Class 6 | October 17 | Political ecology ‘here and now’ • Guthm an, J. (2010) Excess Consumption or Over-production? US Farm Policy, Global Warming, and the Bizarre Attribution of Obesity. In Peet, R. Robbins, P. and Watts, M. (Eds) Global Political Ecology (51-66). London: Routledge. [E] • Robbins, P. and J. Sharp (2003) Producing and Consuming Chemicals: The Moral Economy of the American Lawn. Economic Geography, 9(4), 425-451. [E] Class 7 | October 24 | Gender, race & Nature + IN-CLASS MIDTERM TEST (1 hr) • Rocheleau, D., Thom as-Slayter B., and W angari, E. (1997) Gender and Environment: A Feminist Political Ecology Perspective. In Rocheleau, D., Thomas-Slayter, B., and Wangari, E. (Eds) Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences (3-23). New York: Routledge. [S] • M ollett, S. (2010) Está listo (Are you ready)? Gender, race and land registration in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve. Gender, Place & Culture, 17(3): 357-375. [E] Class 8 | October 31 | Developm ent and the state • Ferguson, J. and Lohm ann, L. (1994) The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development” and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. The Ecologist, 24(5): 176-181. [E] • Scott, J.C. (1998) Introduction & Nature and Space. In Seeing Like A State (1-52). New Haven: Yale University Press. [E/S] Class 9 | Novem ber 7 | M aps, m easures, and governance • Klooster, D. (2009) Standardizing Sustainable Development? The Forest Stewardship Council’s Plantation Policy Review Process as Neoliberal Environmental Governance, Geoforum. 41(1), 117129. [E] • Peluso, N. (1995) Whose Woods Are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode 27(4), 383-406. [E] Class 10 | Novem ber 14 | Notions of scarcity and security • M itchell, T. (1991) America’s Egypt: Discourse of the Development Industry. Middle East Report, 169, 18-36. [E] • Peluso, N. and M . W atts (2001) Violent Environments. In Peluso, N. and M. Watts (Eds.) Violent Environments (3-38) Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [S] • Sayre, N. (2008) The genesis, history, and limits of carrying capacity. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 98(1), 120-134. [E] Class 11 | Novem ber 21 |It’s not easy buying green • Bryant, R. and M. Goodman (2004) Consuming Narratives: The Political Ecology of ‘Alternative’ Consumption, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 29, 344-366. [E] • M cAfee, K. (1999) Selling Nature to Save It? Biodiversity and the Rise of Green Developmentalism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 17(2), 133-154. [E] Class 12 | November 28 | Desiring and resisting developm ent • Film : Chemical Valley. Available at http://www.vice.com/en_ca/vice-news/the-chemical-valley-fulllength [excerpts to be shown in class] • Film : Land of Destiny [excerpts to be shown in class] • Rangan, H. (1996) From Chipko to Uttaranchal: Development, environment, and social protests in the Garhwal Himalayas, India. In Peet, R. and M. Watts (Eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (205-226), London: Routledge. [S] • W hite, R. (1995) Are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living? In Cronon (Ed), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking Human Place in Nature (171-185). New York: W.W. Norton and Co. [S]

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5. Assessm ent and deadlines Participation Three questions One-page responses Paper proposal M idterm test Paper outline Final paper Paper rewrite

Throughout the term 10 during the term 2-3 during the term October 3 October 24 October 31 November 17 December 5

5% 5% 5% 10% 15% 10% 30% 20%

* Participation: Participation is key to the success of the seminar. I will assign 5% of your grade based on in-class participation. Obviously this means that you must come to class prepared to discuss the readings. This grade reflects the quality of your discussion more than the quantity: sometimes being a good participant means listening rather than speaking, and offering questions or comments that open up discussion can be more helpful than grand statements demonstrating your knowledge. * Three questions: Each week (excluding the first class and one ‘vacation’ week of your choosing) you will email me three questions you think would generate good class discussion based on that week’s readings. You will submit a total of ten sets of questions over the term. These are due by midnight on Wednesday, the day before the class. I will not accept late submissions for these questions. * One-page reading responses (250-350 words): You will submit these by midnight on the Tuesday BEFORE the readings are discussed in class through the Blackboard website (see 6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin). Starting after Class 2, you may submit up to three of these over the term. If you submit three, I will take the best two of three. If you only submit two, I will just use those two. Each will be worth 2.5%. These are not summaries of the readings, but focused discussions in which you develop some idea brought up in the readings for that week. I will provide more detail about these responses in Class 2. I will not accept late submissions for these responses. * Paper proposal (250-500 words): You will submit a brief proposal for your term paper through the Blackboard website (see 6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin). More details will be provided in class. * M idterm test: This will be based on the readings and class discussions up to this point. I will provide you with most of the questions beforehand, but I reserve the right to throw in a couple of ‘surprise’ questions. * Paper outline (500-750 words): You will submit an outline of your term paper through the Blackboard website (see 6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin). More details will be provided in class. * Final paper (2500-3000 words): Your paper draft will be due by midnight on Sunday November 17. You will submit these to Turnitin through the Blackboard website (see 6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin). * Paper rewrite (2500-3000 words): I will provide feedback on your final papers by November 28. You will submit a revised version of the final paper to Turnitin through the Blackboard website by midnight of December 5 (see 6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin ).

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6. Assignm ent subm issions and Turnitin The one-page responses, the paper proposal, the paper outline, the final paper, and the paper rewrite will be submitted on Blackboard under the Assignm ent Subm issions tab using Turnitin. The University requires that I provide you with the following information about Turnitin: Norm ally, students will be required to subm it their course essays to Turnitin.com for a review of textual sim ilarity and detection of possible plagiarism . In doing so, students will allow their essays to be included as source docum ents in the Turnitin.com reference database, where they will be used solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism . The term s that apply to the University's use of the Turnitin.com service are described on the Turnitin.com web site. You will be able to see your own Originality Report when you submit your paper on Blackboard, which highlights questionable areas that you might need to rephrase or check for proper citation. I have selected the ‘No Repository’ option on Blackboard for your submissions. Ostensibly this means that your paper will NOT be stored in any database. If you do not wish to use Turnitin, please speak with me privately to make alternate arrangements. 7. Support and accommodation * Accessibility: The University of Toronto is committed to accessibility. If you require accommodations for a disability, or have any accessibility concerns about the course, the classroom, or the course materials, please contact Accessibility Services as soon as possible: [email protected] or http://studentlife.utoronto.ca/accessibility. * English language support: If English is your second (or third, or fourth!) language and you need some help developing your English language skills, please visit the University’s English Language Learning site for a great list of the resources available: http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/advising/ell. * W riting and research: Visit the Writing at the U of T website for a list of helpful resources: www.writing.utoronto.ca. You can also consult your College Registrar's Office for information on writing skills labs and writing courses. * M ental health: If you have mental health concerns, you are not alone! Over half of the undergraduates in a recent University of Alberta student survey reported feeling extreme anxiety or hopelessness. Please contact Counseling and Psychological Services for help: www.caps.utoronto.ca. 8. Academ ic integrity While I encourage you to discuss the class topics and assignments with others, I expect that the essays you submit are your own work. This includes learning how to properly cite and summarize information from other sources. For help with this, see the very useful document, “How not to plagiarize”: www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/using-sources/how-not-to-plagiarize. Cheating and plagiarism are serious offences at the University of Toronto, and I expect you to be familiar with and abide by the University’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters: http://www.governingcouncil.utoronto.ca/policies/behaveac.htm Plagiarism is quoting or paraphrasing the work of another author (including the work of fellow students) without proper use of citations (and quotations marks when using an author’s words). You also should not be submitting any academic work for which you have previously obtained (or are currently seeking) credit without first discussing this with me. Page 6 of 6