IEP 426: Contested Natures

AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Aims and Objectives

Aims

• to examine the changing significance of nature in everyday life;
• to identify the ways in which all ideas of nature are inextricably entangled in different forms of social life;
• to set out the implications of such an approach for improved environmental decision-making.

Learning outcomes

After taking this module students should be able to:

• understand how ideas of nature have been historically shaped by social and cultural factors;
• elaborate on the many ways in which the apparently natural world has been produced within particular social practices;
• demonstrate how such social practices can be analysed in terms of different times, different senses and the production of different spaces;
• show that popular conceptions of, and attitudes towards, the natural world are often contradictory and that there are no simple ways of prevailing upon people to ‘save the environment’;
• outline contemporary developments in environmental politics and their relationship to broader trends in society;
• think about the different ideas or constructions of nature that underpin environmental controversies;
• express their own thoughts on the culture of the environment in discussion and in writing.