GEOG 372 - Topics in Human Geography

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2016/17a: Placing Collective Action: Geography & Social Movements. Why does collective action emerge in some contexts but not others? How do social movements mobilize support for their agendas? How are space and place integral to and reproduced through political struggle? This seminar explores these central questions through exploration of sociological approaches to the study of social movements developed both in the US and Western Europe. Geographical critiques of these theories are also explored, with an emphasis on the role of space and place in structuring collective action, as well as on the production of urban space through political struggle. We start with classical works on the production of space and place, including selections by Lefebvre, Harvey, Massey, Agnew, and Don Mitchell. This is followed by an overview of the major theoretical approaches to the study of social movements within sociology, drawing on work by McCarthy and Zald, McAdam, Tarrow, Benford and Snow, and Habermas, among others. We then turn to geographically-informed explanations of collective action and explore emerging trends in the study of collective action such as the role of new technologies in activists’ efforts to control urban space, the rise of zero tolerance approaches to policing urban protest, the increasingly transnational character of movements, and what this all means for emerging alternatives to territorially-bound citizenship. Susan Blickstein.

Topic for 2016/17b: Political Ecology. The relationship between environmental change and the livelihoods of peoples across the planet has long been a central concern of geographers. Political ecology is a particular, albeit multifaceted, approach to such matters. Broadly concerned with the dialectical ties between nature and society, it centers its analysis on social relations, power and difference; geographic unevenness; positionality, and issues of social justice. Course readings explore myriad themes that political ecologists focus on: resource exploitation, conflict and violence, race and gender, governmentality, rural development, and urban and industrial phenomena. In engaging such themes, the course interrogates vari- ous theoretical approaches ranging from actor network theory, to cultural studies, to Marxism and post-coloniality. Joseph Nevins.

One 3-hour period.