ENVI 204
Colonialism, Capitalism and Climate Crisis Fall 2022
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed AFR 233 / GBST 233 / ENVI 204
This is not the current course catalog

Evolutions are part of human existence. These changes are not necessarily natural, uniform or linear across space and time. As colonial conquests sought to capture, dominate and exploit vast swathes of land, nature and people, supported by economic theories, violent, wide-ranging and long-term changes profoundly altered the environment and human-nature relationships. This course examines these transformations, specifically attending to the relationship between colonized/colonial (hu)man, nature and non-human species, drawing in perceptions of nature and the economy. Our starting point for this intellectual journey is the colonial imprint on human-ecological relations i.e. economic man, or Sylvia Wynter’s conception of “ethno-class man” and “homo-economicus”. We will consider social difference especially race as a central conjuncture of the changing relationship of capitalism and social organization relative to natural resource extraction, techno-scientific knowledge, industrial development and resulting accumulation of greenhouse gases that induce climate and ecological crises. We will also examine economic perspectives of climate change as a market failure, loss of economic value or a financial risk to stock portfolios that may be at odds with humane ways of organizing our collective planet. This course exposes the hierarchies of social difference and resulting inequalities (class, race, gender, species) under climate crisis to advance reparative and decolonial understandings. Drawing upon experiences from social, labor and environmental movements for climate justice, students will be able evaluate situated political economic responses to the climate crisis.