• Offered for Year: 2026/27

• Module Leader(s): Dr Audrey Verma
• Lecturer: Dr James Riding

• Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

When we think of saving the earth as social researchers, we might begin to consider who ‘we’ refers to and excludes, whose worlds have already been irreversibly altered, how this task relates to unequal consumption, risks and capacities to ‘save’, and what the limits and possibilities of social research are in this environmental era.

This module examines the exclusionary structures and relations of oppression shaping our present environmental moment – widely known as the anthropocene - and reflects on contested versions of the pasts that led here and the futures we purportedly want or need to shape. Narratives tracing the inseparability of nature, society and power are thus central to the module. The module engages with such accounts through close reading of critical, decolonial and anti-colonial perspectives on environment and society, from across sociology, anthropology, geography, history, science and technology studies and environmental humanities. We centre empirical accounts from non-hegemonic voices, and interventions from marginalised peoples at the forefront of crisis, loss and change.

The module’s primary aims are three-fold:

Substantively, it facilitates the re-thinking of conventional and dominant discourses, practices and techniques associated with environmental issues, through the reading and application of a range of critical and embedded approaches. Approaches covered are likely to include: eco-feminism , eco-Marxism, political ecology, environmentalism of the poor, Black studies, Indigenous studies and de/anti-colonial scholarship.

Epistemologically, the module grapples with the ideas and means we have for practising social research in our environmental era, to consider how our theories, methods and stories may be contextualised, brought to account, and remain relevant for the concerns of the anthropocene.

Practically, this module seeks to situate understandings of contemporary environmental issues within and across time, space and disciplines, paying close attention to unequal causes, impacts and responsibilities.

Outline Of Syllabus

Content will be responsive to current debates and events. General topics are likely to include a selection from the following:

HOW DID WE GET HERE?: Missing environmental hi/stories and contested definitions
MAKING SENSE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE: Critical theories, methods and ethics
INTER-SPECIES (DIS)ENTANGLEMENTS: Biodiversity conservation, extinction and humans/non-human relations
WILDERNESS & LANDSCAPES: Cultural representations of land
WASTE, VALUE AND CRISIS: Consumer cultures, capitalist production and the environment
TOXICITY AND HEAT: Intersecting inequalities of planetary, social and health crises
THE CARBON BOOTPRINT: Militaritisation, securitisation and the ecocide-genocide nexus
BLUE ANTHROPOCENES: Riverways, deltas, mangroves and glaciers
'SAVING THE EARTH': Environmental citizenship and social justice
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?: Multiple ends, new possibilities and contested anthropocene futures


Indicative reading list
Danowski, Deborah and Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2016. The ends of the world. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Downey, Liam. 2015. Inequality, democracy, and the environment. New York: New York University Press.
Ferdinand, Malcolm. 2021. Decolonizing ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean world. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kimmerer, Robin W. 2015. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. London: Harvard University Press.
Pellow, David N. 2018. What is critical environmental justice? Cambridge: Polity Press.
Todd, Zoe. 2015. “Indigenizing the anthropocene.” In Art in the anthropocene: Encounters among aesthetics, politics, environment and epistemology, edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, 241-254. London: Open Humanities Press.
Tsing, Anna L. 2015. The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Shiva, Vandana and Mies, Maria. 2014. Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Yusoff, Kathryn. 2019. A billion black anthropocenes or none. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Weekly sessions will generally comprise of 1-hour module talks (nine in total), followed by 1-hour small group teaching (student-led discussions, nine in total). These sessions will approximate academic seminar formats, including breaks. The talks provide up-to-date conceptual, empirical and interdisciplinary material supplementing weekly readings, to form the basis for inclusive follow-on small group discussions.

Students are expected to engage with topics and readings prior to sessions, and come prepared to participate in discussions. To facilitate discussions, students will sign up to be discussants/chairs for one small group teaching session. Chairs will be responsible for providing brief overviews of topics and/or readings, and proposing and fielding topic-related activities, questions and/or discussions, with guidance and support throughout from the module leader.

Workshops (two x 2 hours) will be assignment-focussed, comprised of student-led discussion intended to help students articulate, refine and develop their case studies in a collegiate environment.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Two interlinked assessments allow students to develop and progress their empirical interests over the course of the module. Students independently choose one relevant environmental case study to work with for both assessments (proposal and essay).

(1) Research proposal: 800 word proposal, no fieldwork to be involved, focuses on identifying key question/s of interest, a brief literature review and initial thoughts on how critical approaches may be applied. The research proposal allows students to delve into their case study and the critical approaches taught within the module. This assessment enables skills of identifying key texts, developing and summarising research ideas, starting to apply module concepts/theories, and structuring/articulating arguments in a brief, focused way. The length of the proposal reflects wordcount constraints for funding proposals or project pitches students might encounter in post-graduate employment or further studies.

(2) Essay: 2000 word essay, focused on application of critical approach/es to case study. The essay will assess high-level thinking and writing skills, including structure, clarity, abstraction, analysis, synthesis, editing and referencing.

Students are provided with the ongoing opportunity to edit and refine their work, partly in response to constructive feedback from the module leader and course group. Workshop sessions early in the module will enable students to share exploratory insights on their chosen case studies, to reflect on their research interests and ideas in a collegiate and constructive academic environment. These non-graded discussion sessions will form the basis for the linked research proposal and essay assignments, while giving students the opportunity to develop presentation and communication skills.

Reading Lists

• SOC8069's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• SOC8069's Timetable