Sustainability, Gender, & Development in the Global South/Winter 2018 Syllabus
“When people ask what gender has to do with sustainability, I am always at a loss. What about sustainability does NOT have to do with gender — and race, class, age, sexuality — is the question.” — Marguerite Waller
Grade:
10% Attendance
20% Job Application (submission 1) due week 2
20% Job Application (submission 2) due week 8
15% Medium 1 due Week 4
15% Medium 2 due Week 7
20% Medium 3 due finals week
Assignment: Resume and Cover Letter for a sustainability-focused job
Week 1–6: Theory
The Globality of the ‘Global South’
- Lecture
Economic Justice
- Vandana Shiva’s “Living Economies” from Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
key concepts: anti-infrastructure/maldevelopment
Poverty as Capital
- Watch: Stephanie Black and Jamaica Kincaid’s Life and Debt
- Read Ananya Roy’s Poverty Capital (pgs 1–40)
key concepts: IMF, Structural Adjustment Programs, Microfinancing, Non-Aligned Movement (Jamaica/Michael Manley added 1979)
Disaster Capitalism
Read: Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine (pgs 1–21)
Slow Violence
Read: Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (“Slow Violence, Neoliberalism, and the Environmental Picaresque” pgs. 1–45; “Slow Violence, Gender, and the Environmentalism
of the Poor” pgs. 128–49)
“Literary Tree Politics” in California.
Mila Aguilar, Chipko, and Ron Finley
Decolonization and the New Imperialism
Read: Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization is not a Metaphor”
Read: David Harvey’s “The New Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession”
Weeks 7–10: Practice/Solutions
“I’d like to learn about fast fashion…it speaks to me the most.” — S.P.
The Circular Business Model
“Economic development and gender equality go hand-in-hand.”
Women Who Grow
“When I drive on the 60 freeway there are so many trucks polluting the air…I want to know if there are sustainable alternative for transportation.” — A.T.
“I want to know about food and sustainability.” — Sustainability Studies Student
Palm Oil and Deforestation
Avocados, NAFTA, Knights Templar, deforestation, and Football
Quinoa and Bolivian Farmers
Our Oceans.
