Course Catalogue

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Using an anthropological perspective, this course will explore the complex ways that environment and health converge. Key will be thinking about what 'health' and 'wellbeing' mean in a time of planetary crisis. We will consider how changing climates`, degraded ecologies, and multispecies relations shape the conditions of life, health, and wellbeing across the world. We will explore how key anthropological theoretical concepts and methodologies intersect with cross cultural, everyday lived experiences as exemplified through ethnography. Drawing on ethnographic studies of health, pollution, toxicity, and climate adaptation, we will ask how people experience and make sense of environmental transformations through their bodies, infrastructures, and everyday practices of health and care. Key to this course is drawing insights from lived experiences of peoples across the world that expand thinking beyond biomedical models of health to include cultural, social, and political understandings of health and environment. This course offers insight into how anthropology directly engages in critical and timely questions about health in a period of rapid environmental change.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars (on campus)

In order to take this course, you need to have met the requirements for entry into our Honours Programme. This means achieving a grade of 'D' or better in Sociology 1A and 1B and a 'C' or better in Sociology 2A and 2B. You also have to comply with the College of Social Science regulations for progression to Honours.

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The full summative assessment will be a portfolio based on a photovoice style project adapted for the classroom that combines photography, writing (theoretical and empirical) and oral presentation.

In-class training/instruction will be provided for both components of the portfolio. Should students need device support for photography, they will either be paired for photography activities (with all students paired to reduce any potential stigma) or instructors will loan equipment (old, but functioning devices). Students will be supported through opportunities to make up assessments and record their presentation if they are absent on presentation days.

This course aims to: 1) introduce students to anthropological and sociological perspectives about the intersection of environment and health from around the world and through multiple scales; 2) present these perspectives through social theory frameworks and empirical examples; 3) highlight the presence of health and environmental inequalities and the relevant explanatory frameworks for these inequalities; 4) expand students' thinking beyond biomedical views of health to include cultural, social, and political understandings of how our health and environment are interconnected.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Interpret the intersection of environment and health from an anthropological perspective.

2. Critically evaluate how ecological relations produce health challenges and inequalities and explore the solutions used to solve them.

3. Assess how global politics, power structures, and funding impacts policy agendas at global and local scales.

4. Understand and compare cross-cultural experiences of relations between environment and health and how people differentially experience these relations in their everyday lives.

5. Construct and implement independent research on a topic of interest to them.

6. Utilise group work to interpret, discuss, and present course related materials.