DSOC 3020 Political Ecologies of Health (spring 2018, spring 2019, spring 2020)
This course investigates the relationships between political economy, the environment, and health to understand how disease and the desire for health transform social and ecological systems and how these systems impact human health. Using contemporary case studies from the United States and the Global South, we will critically analyze how class, race, and gender affect specific populations’ health differently from others. We will move across scales from ecosystems and global development institutions to farms and cities to homes, offices, and bodies. We will also explore the roles capitalism, economic inequality, and environmental and social justice play in creating diverse health outcomes. Topics include infectious diseases; food policy and obesity; pollution and race; the US opioid crisis; epigenetics; and environmental toxins including nuclear and chemical contamination.
DSOC 3150 Climate Change & Global Development: Living in the Anthropocene (fall 2019, fall 2020)
This course investigates social, political, and economic life in the age of the “Anthropocene”: the current geological era in which humans have irrevocably altered the earth’s biophysical systems. We analyze what political-economic dynamics have led to this, how climate change is known and predicted scientifically, and the impacts it has on politics, economies, environments, and societies across scales. Drawing on case studies from around the world, we investigate topics including climate change impacts on land, oceans, animals, and forests; climate migrants and political instability; (un)natural disasters such as fires, floods, and hurricanes; and sea level rise and cities. We also investigate at existing and potential political and economic responses to climate change ranging from international governance agreements and green markets to local climate justice movements.
DSOC 4060/6020 Digital Capitalism (fall 2020)
How are information technology and digital infrastructure reshaping global development? Conversely, how are distinctive conceptions of development shaping the construction of information infrastructure? This course critically analyzes the relationships between social and economic inequality, the environment, and information technology such as big data, smartphones, internet connectivity, remote sensing, and computing algorithms. Questions include: how is information technology used to structure labor forces? How does the production, maintenance, and use of these technologies reflect global political economy and power structures? In what ways does digital infrastructure shape understanding of and interventions into urban and rural environments, political institutions, and social movements? This seminar course takes an interdisciplinary approach to answering these questions, drawing on recent scholarship from critical development studies, science and technology studies, geography, and anthropology.
DSOC 6150 Qualitative Methods (spring 2020)
Graduate seminar on qualitative research in the social sciences, with an emphasis on how we study global development methodologically. In particular, we investigate how material-discursive processes such as capitalism, inequality, globalization, colonialism, power, and hegemony can be approached through grounded empirical research. The course is “studio” based: you will experiment with elements of research design based on creative insights from readings, conversation, and critical reflection about your project. We cover alternative methodological directions in the qualitative social sciences (infrastructure, the digital) as well as the staples of fieldwork: interviews, participant observation, ethics, positionality, and data analysis. We think about theory and method together, as decisions about method cannot be divorced from broader theoretical and conceptual issues.
