Description

The course will focus on the interaction between humans and their natural environment, with emphasis on culture as the primary medium through which nature is perceived and understood. Ultimately, it is through culture and its ability to adapt, regenerate, and change, as a system of meanings, that humans will (perhaps) be able to survive the drastic changes their environment is going through.

The course will give an overview of the basic concepts of the field of human ecology, as well as theories of subsistence-systems and the social organisations whose understanding is important for the analysis of human-environmental interaction. Actual cases, both historical and contemporary, will be used to evaluate these theories and other ideas about how human-environment interactions take place. These cases will largely be from Iceland, but students will be encouraged to bring in their experience and knowledge of other cases that relate to the course's theoretical approach. In general, discussions, student presentations, and field-trips will play a central role in building up a body of knowledge relevant for this course. This is particularly so since any academic body of knowledge is constantly being remade, and all those involved should make a contribution.

 

The course will introduce other research fields related to human ecology, such as political ecology, environmental history, cultural ecology, and environmental anthropology, to name a few.

 

The course will also introduce theories of the values, beliefs and knowledge through which the natural environment is perceived, lived in, adapted to, and ultimately changed.

Learning outcomes

After completing the course in human ecology the student should have:

• acquired an understanding of the latest concepts and theories in the field of human ecology, as well as its central fields of inquiry and research questions.


• deepened and broadened his or her knowledge of human-environment interactions.


• gained an ability to use that knowledge in his or her work in the field of natural and resource management.


• acquired the ability to collect, evaluate, and analyse data in the field of human ecology and to integrate that into the interdisciplinary field of natural resource management.


• acquired the necessary theoretical and practical understanding of the main qualitative methods of collecting, analysing, and applying human-ecological knowledge in situations where natural and resource management is under scrutiny.

Assessment

• Attendance, participation and originality in discussions, individual and group assignments, and presentations: 20%;
• 3 individual papers (ca. 3 pages), delivered each week, presenting contemplations based on the literature, lectures, and discussions: 10% each = 30% in all. These papers are used as starting points for weekly class discussions;
• A group assignment on a particular theoretical and/or practical issue, presented to the whole group in a workshop, and commented on and discussed by all present: 20%;
• An individual assignment in the form of an essay (ca. 10 pages) delivered at the end of the course, in which the author presents a particular problem which is analysed with reference to theoretical texts and to cases described in the literature: 30%.

Instructor

Helga Ögmundardóttir is a PhD-candidate in cultural anthropology at the Universtity of Uppsala, Sweden, and a researcher at the Institute of sustainable development, University of Iceland. Her former and current research-fields are: Icelandic immigrants in North-America in the 19th and 20th centuries, with focus on their contact with the indigenous populations there; human-nature interaction in Icelandic coastal areas in a historical perspective, with focus on the rise and fall of the herring-fisheries in the 20th c.; traditional and modern land-use in the Icelandic highland, with focus on commons management; energy- and technology-transitions in a social and cultural perspective, with focus on energy- and fuel-transitions in Iceland in the 20th c. and in the future.

Helga was born in Neskaupstaður, in the Eastfjords, but lives in Reykjavík.

Guest lecturer

Further reading