Date and time: Thursday 1 September 2022; 13:15-15:00 (UTC+2)

Teacher: Rikard Warlenius

Location: Room 204 (Annedalseminariet)

Slides

In this class, human ecology is first broadly introduced: its interdisciplinary roots in ecology, humanities and social sciences and more recent developments into ‘structural human ecology’. We will then shift focus to how human ecologists (and other critical environmental social scientists) have engaged with economics. Standard, neoclassical economics is criticized for externalizing material and ecological aspects as well as social and global justice perspectives. This criticism is often founded in structuralist political economy and ecological economics. Strives for development and economic growth are problematized and concepts such as ecological debt and ecologically unequal exchanges are discussed.

Required reading:
Group A	Spash, Clive L. (2017) “Social ecological economics”, in Clive L. Spash (ed.): Routledge Handbook on Ecological Economics: Nature and Society, Routledge, p. 3-16. E-book on GUB.
Group B	Hornborg, Alf (2017) “Political ecology and unequal exchange”, in Clive L. Spash (ed.): Routledge Handbook on Ecological Economics: Nature and Society, Routledge, p. 39-47. E-book on GUB.
All	Dietz, Thomas and Richard York (2021) ‘Structural Human Ecology’. In Beth Shaefer Caniglia, Andrew Jorgensen, Stephanie Malin, Lori Peek, David Pellow, Xiaoru Huang (eds) Handbook on Environmental Sociology. Springer Nature, pp. 439-456. E-book on GUB.

Suggested additional reading

Many more of the chapters of these handbooks are relevant for human ecology and 'heterodox' political economy. Please scroll through the Tables of contents and shop around for deepened and complementary perspectives.

A slightly less structural Human ecology is introduced in Dyball, Rob, and Barry Newell (2014) Understanding Human Ecology : A Systems Approach to Sustainability, Routledge.

Ecological economics is often taught with the broad textbook Daly, Herman E., and Joshua C. Farley (2011) Ecological Economics : Principles and Applications. 2nd ed. Island.

More literature will be mentioned in the class and you are of course welcome to ask for further recommendations or make recommendations yourself.