Environment, Society and Development in the Global South

This course teaches state-of the art research within the field environment, society, and development with a specific focus on understanding theoretical approaches to development geography and coupled human-environment systems in the Global South. The course provides the theoretical and historical foundations for understanding contemporary sustainability agendas, including approaches to sustainable development.

The content of the course is organized in two themes:

Theme one on development geography focuses on societal transformation processes in urban and rural areas in the Global South. Urbanization and development have been entwined concepts since the early days of development geography. As the current dynamic centers of urbanization have shifted to the Global South, there is a growing scholarly attention to urbanization, its varied impacts on economies, livelihoods and environments and the interconnected transformations of both urban and rural contexts. Rural transformation is concerned with long-term trends and transitions in rural areas, including the socio-economic differentiation of the peasantry and the emergence of capitalist farmers and rural workers. For decades, it has been a key issue in development geography to examine barriers and drivers for these processes. Seminars will outline and discuss how contemporary scholars theorize and explore urbanization and rural transformation processes in the Global South.

Theme two focuses on the dynamics of coupled human–environmental systems and the multiple conceptual models that have been proposed to understand this complex relationship. These include cultural, human and political ecology, land use intensification, land system science, sustainability science, resilience and vulnerability approaches. All of these have attempted to include environmental and social factors and feedbacks at different levels of spatial and temporal scales as well as identifying driving forces of change. The seminars will discuss approaches that relate to interactions between the human and environmental spheres.