Politics 114: THINKING GREEN
Politics, Ethics, Political Economy

Spring 2005, MWF 2-3:10, Cowell 131
Instructor: Ronnie Lipschutz
Office: 234 Crown College
Office Hours: Mon. 1-2;Th., 12:30-1:30
Phone: 459-3275/e-mail: rlipsch@ucsc.edu

TA: James Rowe, jkrowe@ucsc.edu

Web url: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114/syllabus.html

Vincent Van Gogh

(Last updated on May 27, 2005)

What does it mean to “think Green?” Are Green politics and environmentalism the same? If not, how do they differ? What are the philosophical bases of Green thought? Were Aristotle and Hobbes closet Greens? Do Green political parties have any chance of gaining power, or are they doomed to opposition? What does it mean to be biocentric? Is sustainable development feasible or a fantasy? What do Green political programs propose to do? This is a course on Green political thought and practice. In it, we shall examine the origins and content of ecological politics, ethics and political economy, and ask whether they offer a “realistic” alternative to neo-liberalism and other political ideologies.

The workload for the course is substantial. In addition to intensive reading, students will be expected to write two papers of five pages in length that analyze and critique the readings, plus a ten page final paper that examines a topic of interest to you through ecological theory. Part of the course will consist of lectures, but there will be substantial discussion of the materials in class, and everyone is expected to contribute to them through group presentations of various perspectives on Green Thought.

Assigned texts (available at Slug Books, and on reserve at McHenry)

Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (Avon, 1997).

Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (Bantam, 1990).

Michael E. Zimmerman, et. al, Environmental Philosophy (Prentice-Hall, 2005, 4^th ed.)

Warren Magnusson and Kara Shaw (eds.), A Political Space—Reading the Global Through Clayoquot Sound (Minnesota, 2003).

Robyn Eckersley, The Green State—Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2004).

Bruno Latour, The Politics of Nature (Harvard, 2004).

Anna L. Peterson, Being Human--Ethics, Environment, and Our Place in the World (UC Press, 2001)

Other highly recommended books:
Joan Bennett & William Chaloupka (eds), In the Nature of Things (Minnesota, 1993).
Robyn Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory (SUNY Press, 1992).
Thom Kuehls, Beyond Sovereign Territory (U. Minnesota Press, 1996).
Nicholas Low and Brendan Gleeson, Justice, Society and Nature (Routledge, 1998).
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (Harper & Row, 1980).
John Meyer, Political Nature (MIT Press, 2001).
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon, 2001; 2nd ed.)

Francis Cropsey, Indian Summer

Course schedule (click on the hyperlinked lecture titles to see the lecture notes):

Week 1 (3/28-4/1): What does it mean to “Think Green?” (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk1.html)

Required reading: Abbey, The Monkeywrench Gang ; Callenbach, Ecotopia

Here is Assignment #1 (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Assignment%201.doc)
Here is Chapter 2 of Global Environmental Politics (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Ch2.html)

Other recommended resources:

R. Bryant and S. Bailey, Third World Political Ecology (Routledge, 1997)..
Neil Carter, The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy (Cambridge, 2001).
William Cronon (ed), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (Norton, 1996).
Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought (Routledge, 2000, 3^rd ed.).
David Goldblatt, Social Theory and the Environment (Polity, 1996).
Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism. Essays North and South (Earthscan, 1997)..
Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth (Cambridge,1988)..

Week 2 (4/4-8): The nature of authority and the authority of nature (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk2.html)

Required reading: Zimmerman, et al., pp. 67-115, 390-408; Peterson, ch. 1-3; Eckersley, ch. 1-2; Latour, ch. 1

Other recommended resources:

David Arnold, The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture, and European Expansion (Blackwell, 1996).
Neil Evernden, The Social Creation of Nature (Johns Hopkins, 1992).
Barbara Noske, Humans and Other Animals (1989, London: Pluto Press).
George Robinson et al, Future Natural: Nature, Science and Culture (Routledge, 1996).
I.G. Simmons, Interpreting Nature (Routledge, 1993).
Kate Soper, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human (Blackwell, 1995)

Week 3 (4/11-15): States, markets, environments: One system or many? (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk3.html)

Required reading: Eckersley, ch. 3-6; Zimmerman, et al, pp. 409-18; 430-61; Magnusson and Shaw, pp. 1-66.

Other recommended resources:

Steven Bernstein, The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism (Columbia, 2001).
Avner de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters (Routledge, 1995).
Mark Diesendorf and Clive Hamilton (eds), Human Ecology, Human Economy (Allen and Unwin, 1997).
Terry Anderson and Donald Leal, Free Market Environmentalism (Westview, 1991).
William Ophuls and A Stephan Boyan, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (Norton, 1991, 3^rd ed.).
Charles Rubin, The Green Crusade (Free Press, 1995).

Week 4 (4/18-22): Oikos—Is a “Green” Economy possible without a Green State?
(http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk4.html)

Required reading: Zimmerman, et al, pp. 419-29, 462-95; Magnusson and Shaw, pp. 121-77

Other recommended resources:

Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good (Beacon, 1989).
Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature (Fernwood/Zed, 2002).
Timothy Luke, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology (University of Illinois, 1999).
Lester Milbrath, Envisioning a Sustainable Society (SUNY Press, 1989).
Aseem Prakash, Greening the Firm (Cambridge, 2000).

You can find Assignment #2 here: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Assignment%202.html

Week 5 (4/25-29): Ethics and our place in nature (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk5.html)

Required reading: Zimmerman, et al., pp. 130-38; Peterson, ch 7

Other recommended resources:

Mary E. Clark, Ariadne's Thread--The Search for New Modes of Thinking (St. Martin's, 1989).
Amdrew Light and Avner de-Shalit (eds.), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT Press, 2003).
Nicholas Low (ed.), Global Ethics and Environment (Routledge, 1999).
Nicholas Low and Brendan Gleeson, Justice, Society and Nature (Routledge, 1998).
Thomas R. Dunlap, Faith in Nature (University of Washington Press, 2004).

Here is the prompt for Assignment #3: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Assignment%203.html

Week 6 (5/2-6): Self and other in nature (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk6.html)

Require reading: Peterson, ch. 4-5; Zimmerman, et al, pp. 25-66, 296-310; Magnusson and Shaw, pp. 199-236.

Other recommended resources:

Robyn Eckersley, “Beyond Human Racism” [Reply to Lynch and Wells], in Environmental Values (1998).

Tony Lynch and David Wells, “Non-Anthropocentrism? A Killing Objection” in Environmental Values (1998).

George Sessions (ed.), Deep Ecology for the 21^st Century (Shambala, 1995).

Mick Smith, An ethics of place: radical ecology, postmodernity, and social theory (SUNY Press, 2001).

Week 7 (5/9-13): Ecofeminism as green politics (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk7.html)

Required reading: Zimmerman, et al., pp. 139-279; Peterson, ch. 6.

Other recommended resources:

Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (Harper & Row, 1980).
Joni Seager, Earth Follies (Routledge, 1993).
Ariel Salleh, Ecofeminism as Politics (Zed, 1997)
Catriona Sandilands, The Good-Natured Feminist (Minnesota, 1999).
Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies, Ecofeminism (Fernwood, 1993).
Karen J. Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy : A Western Perspective On What It Is And Why It Matters (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

Week 8 (5/16-20): Can science save us? (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Pol114.S05.wk8.html)
Note: The graphics on this page will not work property in Netscape; please use MS Explorer or look at this page: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Steven%20Vogel.doc

Required reading: Latour, ch. 2-5; Zimmerman, et al., pp. 311-59

Other recommended resources:

Ulrich Beck, Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (Polity, 1995)..
Ronnie Lipschutz, Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance (SUNY Press, 1996).
Michael Redclift and Ted Benton (eds.), Social Theory and the Global Environment (Routledge, 1994).

Week 9 (5/23-27): Politics and nature
This is James's review essay: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol114.s05/Political%20Space%20--%20Final.htm

Required reading: Magnusson and Shaw, pp. 67-90, 113-20, 179-98, 237-62; Latour, Conclusion and Summary

Jane Bennett and William Chaloupka, In the Nature of Things: Language, Politics and the Environment (Minnesota, 1993).
Robert Brulle, Agency, Democracy, and Nature (MIT Press, 2000).
John Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (Oxford, 1997).
Kerry Whiteside, Divided Natures—French Contributions to Political Ecology (MIT Press, 2002)
Ted Benton (ed) The Greening of Marxism (Guildford, 1996).
Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (Black Rose Books, 1991).
Andre Gorz, Ecology as Politics (Pluto, 1980).
David Pepper, Ecosocialism (Routledge, 1993).
James O’Connor, Natural Causes (Guilford, 1998).

Week 10 (6/1-3): Conclusions

Required reading: Peterson, ch. 8-9; Eckersley, ch. 7-9; Magnusson and Shaw, pp. 263-86.

Cotopaxi, Frederic Church (1862)