Human Ecology:  Human Adaptations and the New Global Order

ENV 102  DCE/ONLINE
Spring 2007 - Feb 17 through May 24
Prof. Thomas Love

Course Description:  Social scientific findings and ways of understanding humanity’s place in nature and our current ecological predicament; causes and consequences (environmental, demographic, economic, political, and cultural) of humankind’s transition from food foraging to Neolithic modes of adaptation (horticulture, nomadic pastoralism, intensive agriculture, agro-industrialism) and the emergence of large, state-organized, class-stratified societies; human culture - its characteristics, pervasiveness; cultural similarities and differences across humanity.

Human Ecology:  Human Adaptations and the New Global Order is a four semester-hour course designed to introduce you to the social science portion of the interdisciplinary field of human ecology.  The primary focus of such study is on the ways humans have made a living and made sense of the places they inhabit, and the environmental and socio-cultural consequences (usually unintended) of such practices and understandings.  Everywhere, humans have had to wrest a living from the place they lived.  Especially before the industrial revolution (i.e., 99.9% of human history), each society’s organization and culture were deeply affected by the very different demands of the environmental characteristics of the place they lived - be it tundra or temperate grassland or tropical forest - as refracted through the technology they possessed, the organization of their society and the worldview of their religion.  This meant, typically, that until the industrial period (the last two centuries), human-environment relations have been overwhelmingly local in character and in people’s experience.  Though we industrial peoples still have strong relations with our bio-physical environments, we are buffered from many of the more direct effects of our actions both by our reliance on inter-regional and international trade as well as by our abundant, fossil-fueled energy flow per capita; we can heat our buildings in cold climates and cool them in deserts.  But this also means we draw on and impact ecological processes increasingly far removed from the local environment we actually inhabit.  The effects of our actions, therefore - our “ecological footprint”, are often hidden from us.  Many recent large “natural” disasters (hurricanes, tsunami, fires, flooding, erosion, landslides) increasingly force us to acknowledge that some of the ways and the scale at which we now use resources, be they close at hand or distant, are not sustainable. 

To understand where we are in human-environment relations requires grasping how we got to our present situation.  The course, then, is devoted primarily to describing human adaptive processes through case studies from around the world and across cultures, at regional as well as local scales.  What connections are there between high energy use per capita, skyrocketing human populations, the paradox of hunger amidst plenty, climate change from global warming, and appalling levels of deforestation?  To begin to make sense of these complex interactions we will focus on some of the basic forces (spatial, socio-cultural, ecological, economic, political) that have influenced both past and current distributions of human activities on Earth's surface.  We’ll examine the prospects for protecting Earth’s biodiversity by means of protected areas.  By the end of the course you'll have a much better grasp of the location of people and places on the earth and of their biophysical, economic, political and cultural composition. 

To accomplish these goals, generally speaking we will be working week-by-week through four modules: 
I.  BASIC CONCEPTS AND FRAMEWORKS; GETTING UP TO SPEED
II.  HUMAN ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES
III.  WORLD REGIONS
IV.  GLOBALIZATION:  CAN WE SURVIVE “PROGRESS”?
I describe the work we’ll be doing in each of these, along with your and my responsibilities, in more detail below. 

As I mentioned in the welcome statement, this is my first time teaching in an online format.  I look forward to creatively navigating with you the advantages and disadvantages of this medium.  Though I do not anticipate problems, I apologize in advance for any stumbles I may make as I learn this new technology. 

Linfield Curriculum:  This course is the second part of the two-semester introductory sequence in Environmental Studies required for either the Major or the Minor.  It also counts toward the Anthropology Major or Minor.  It meets the Global Diversity (DG) and Individuals, Societies and Systems (IS) requirements of the Linfield Common Curriculum.

Course Objectives:  The many concepts and issues we will examine this semester point toward several major course objectives:
1)  to understand better the mutual interactions between environmental forces (especially climate and biomes) and human social organization and culture;
2)  to understand why the original culture hearths of humanity were located primarily in the subtropics, but why present core areas are almost entirely at higher latitudes;
3)  to understand concepts of core and periphery at both regional and world system levels, as these systems have developed to the modern globalized world system;
4)  to develop historical-mindedness in grasping macro-micro connections;
5)  to develop habits of mind and writing skills commensurate with your training at a liberal arts college.

Office:  Walker 218; tel: 503-883-2504; fax:  503-883-2635; e-mail:  tlove@linfield.edu
Surface (hard copy) mail (only for Exam #1 and maps in Section III World Regions): 
                                                                  Tom Love
                                                                  Anthropology
                                                                  Unit A470
                                                                  900 SE Baker St.
                                                                  Linfield College
                                                                  McMinnville, OR  97128

Texts:  Required reading (available in the College bookstore) includes:
Heinberg, Richard
              2005  The Party’s Over:  Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, 2nd rev. ed.  Gabriola Island, BC:  New Society Publishers.
                        - a  primer on energy in human adaptation, with a big-picture, hard-headed
                                    examination of “sustainability” of our current agro-industrial way of life and
                                    what may lie ahead in a post-fossil fueled, post-industrial world. 

Hudson, John C., ed. [ATLAS]
            2005  Rand McNally/Goode’s World Atlas, 21st ed.  Chicago:  Rand McNally Publ.
                        - this is the best, single volume student atlas available.  I hope you will keep this
                            with you as an excellent family reference after you leave Linfield.  Used copies
                            of the previous (20th) edition were not much cheaper than the hard cover 21st
                            edition, unfortunately. 

Rowntree, Les, et al.
            2006  Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development, 3rd
                        ed.  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice-Hall.
                        - you can buy a hardcopy, new (bundled with the Hudson atlas listed above for a
                             small savings) or perhaps used, or for 50% of the retail list price you can
                                    buy this text ONLINE!  Go to http://www.safarix.com/takeabrieftour, which
                                    has helpful links.  Click “Subscribing to a SafariX WebBook” to order your
                                    copy.
                        - skim over this text as soon as possible, noting that each of the regional chapters
                                    (3-14) is organized into five sections:  Environmental Geography, Population
                                    and Settlement, Cultural Coherence and Diversity, Geopolitical Framework
                                    and Economic and Social Development. 

You are responsible for all readings, both from these three books as well as some I’ve placed on reserve (marked “R/” below) at Nicholson Library, as they will obviously form the core of our work together in the course.  Readings are set off in [brackets] in the syllabus below, and should be completed by the start of each week’s work.

Linfield’s Nicholson Library not only has the reserve readings, but also resources you can use for your protected area paper.  Many of these resources can be found at a website Carol McCulley and I have created for this course: http://calvin.linfield.edu/~cmccull/regionalgeography.html. 

Disability Statement:  Students with documented disabilities who may need accommodation, who have any emergency medical information an instructor should know, or who require special arrangements in the event of evacuation, should contact me  as early as possible, no later than the first week of classes.  I presume that our online format alleviates most disability-related problems which may exist, but do let me know ASAP.

Grading:  Your course grade will be based on your performance in the following five areas:
                        1)  First section exam (basic concepts, world patterns)                            15%
                        2)  Second exam (human adaptive strategies)                                          15%
                        3)  World regions:                                                                                    35%
                                      Maps (2 regions), chapter review questions (3 regions),
                                        and integrative essays (2 regions) = 7 regions @ 5%           
                        4)  Participation                                                                                        20%
                        5)  Protected Area case study                                                                   10%
                        6)  Two final exam essays                                                                        5%
                                     TOTAL                                                                                      100%           

1)  The first module of the course - BASIC CONCEPTS AND FRAMEWORKS; GETTING UP TO SPEED - is devoted to a global overview of environmental, political economic, and cultural/historical geography.  Though ENV 101 is not a prerequisite, this course does presume some familiarity with earth’s bio-geo-chemical processes; there will be a quick overview of these processes in the first days of the course.  There will be an exam (15%) at the close of this section.  Coming at the end of the first, overview section, only a few weeks into the course, it is designed to get you thinking about the larger bio-physical processes underlying the patterns which characterize the cultural regions of the modern world system. 

2)  The second section of the course - HUMAN ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES - is devoted to understanding humanity’s five major modes of adaptation:  food foraging (hunting & gathering), subsistence horticulture, nomadic pastoralism, intensive agriculture, and agro-industrialism.  The fifth adaptive mode – agro-industrialism – is the one we’re most familiar with, since it’s ours…and it’s spreading, for better or worse, at the expense of people living by non-industrial means.  In this section we’ll focus primarily on the first four, dealing with the environmental impacts and implications of fossil-fueled industrialism and the new global order founded on it throughout the course as we explore different world regions.  A second exam (15%) at the end of this section asks you to explore relations among these human adaptive systems and earth’s bio-physical environments, building on the first section and utilizing both concepts and case studies from this section.

3)  After the first two sections on global patterns and human adaptations, and after Spring Break, we move to WORLD REGIONS and spend most of the rest of the semester examining the interaction of these processes at large (world regional) and local (protected area case studies) scales through various examples of human adaptability around the world utilizing the regional geography framework of your text as well as other materials as noted below.  Again, many resources for your work are available in the library, online or in person, such as those on the course website I mentioned above: http://calvin.linfield.edu/~cmccull/regionalgeography.html

As you can see below, we will begin our World Regions coverage (seve of the 12 in the text) with Latin America, where I have done the bulk of my anthropological fieldwork.  For each of the seven world regions we will be studying (Latin America (and The Caribbean, which we will cover jointly), North America,  North Africa/SW Asia, Russia, East Asia, South Asia), each student will do written work totaling 35% of your course grade as follows:

- prepare maps for two of these seven world regions (2 @ 5%).  Maps will be due at the beginning of our work on a world region (see dates below); they will show environmental and human features for each region.  You can find these blank outline maps on the CD included with your Rowntree text; print off two (one environmental, one political) for use each time.  Using your text and atlas, show all the features listed for each on your text CD on the maps.  Like with the first exam, these will need to be surface mailed to me at the address indicated (all other written work will be submitted online).  

- respond to all of the chapter review questions (“Questions for Summary and Review” and “Thinking Geographically”) for three of the seven world regions (3 @ 5%), due at the very start of the week immediately after we finish our work on a region (see dates below). 

- write an original reflective, integrative essay for the remaining two of the seven world regions (2 @ 5%), due at the very start of the week immediately after we finish our work on a region (see dates below).  For each of these integrative essays, you must send me your question a day or two in advance of writing the essay, as I’m grading you on the quality of the question as well as the answer!  The best question will be one which explores how some large scale process plays out on the ground in a particular region.

- You choose which kind of work you want to do for each of the seven regions, whether the two maps, the two sets of chapter review questions, or an integrative essay.   Just make sure you have the right number of each - 2, 3 and 2 - at the end of the course.

4)  Participation (20%).  In addition to all this formal written work, each student will need to provide at least two relevant, substantive written comments each week in our online discussions of materials and questions posed.  Notice how much weight I’m putting on your participation (1/5 of your total course points).  That means if you get As on all your written work but do not participate weekly, the best grade you can get is a low B/high C.

5)  You will research and present a written protected area case study (@ 15%) examining the special bio-physical characteristics of and factors (economic, political, demographic, cultural) affecting a major protected area in one of our seven world regions.  For example, you may choose to study the Annapurna National Park of Nepal.  You would research this area, using resources on the class website and elsewhere, and write up a report on the biophysical environment and human ecological relations in the area and the larger contexts affecting that protected area.  To organize your examination of what pressures and patterns are happening in this protected area, you will utilize the same five categories in which each world region chapter of your text is divided.  (I will provide a separate handout going into more detail on this project.)

The goal here is to develop your ability to integrate diverse material from each of the five content areas and use them to see how these large-scale processes are playing out on the ground in the lives of local people in protected area of your choosing.  A first draft of your written report will be due no later than 6 May, with the final written report due by 5 p.m. on 24 May, the last day of the semester.  Refer to the handout for more specific instructions and guidelines. 

6)  GLOBALIZATION:  CAN WE SURVIVE “PROGRESS”?  We’ll close off our work this semester with an examination of the prospects for humanity’s fossil-fueled agro-industrial way of life by finishing reading Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over”.   In lieu of some comprehensive final exam, I’ll have you write two reflective essays during the final exam schedule on 23 May (5%).

To sum up:  your grade for this course will be based on my evaluation of your performance on two exams, participation in online discussions, work on seven world geographic regions (maps on two, chapter questions on three and original essays on two), a written protected area case study, and two essays during the final exam period (not a “final exam” as such, just a chance to reflect on what you’ve learned).

Engagement with the course is essential to the learning process.  Be a learning-oriented, not grade-oriented student.  The ability to see the “big picture”, the patterns, the connections among the various bio-physical and socio-cultural processes we will be discussing thoughout stands at the heart of what this course is about.  If you don’t engage yourself with the class and the material, beginning on day one, you won’t do well – it’s as simple as that.  Assume responsibility for your learning.

A final word:  this course is not hard IF YOU KEEP ON TOP OF ASSIGNMENTS AND CONTRIBUTE ACTIVELY TO THE ONLINE DISCUSSIONS.  Do NOT fall behind on your writing and map construction, or you will create major headaches for yourself as you struggle to finish materials on previous world regions as the whole class moves on.  Your grade on the world region maps, practice questions and essays will drop one letter grade for each day they’re late.

TENTATIVE SYLLABUS