Course Description
Human-environment interaction, adaptation, and system dynamics. Students will demonstrate natural and social science reasoning to describe the past through present human biological, behavioral, and cultural adaptations to ecological systems, and to describe social institutions and collective action to manage resources and working landscapes.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will write a paper on an advanced topic.
Athena Title
Cultural Ecology
Prerequisite
ANTH 1102 or ANTH 1102E or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
1. Demonstrate basic knowledge and competency in applying evolutionary biology principles to humans including natural selection, genotypic and phenotypic variation, and the adaptation to local environmental stresses such as food insufficiency, high altitude, and infectious disease. 2. Explain how human evolutionary history and comparative analysis of local human populations can be used to test hypotheses and draw conclusions about human biological, phenotypic, and cultural adaptations and present-day patterns of human diversity. 3. Locate and evaluate reliable sources of quantitative and qualitative evidence on human societies and biophysical environments, use this information to analyze circumstances occurring during the emergence and spread of modern humans over the last ~200,000 years, and construct evidence-based arguments about human-environment interaction. 4. Identify and explain how communities and societies manage common property and act collectively to meet resource challenges through social institutions based on family, exchange, politics, religion, ethnicity, etc. 5. Understand and explain the complex and dynamic nature of cultural, social, political, and economic systems to evaluate real-world collective-action situations and critically assess policy applications at local, national, or global scales.
Topical Outline
1. Evolutionary principles of human adaptation to environmental circumstances 2. Natural selection, and genotypic and phenotypic variation in response to stresses including food insufficiency, high altitude, and infectious disease 3. Individual decision-making and collective action 4. Landscapes, biomes, and ecosystems 5. Subsistence as adaptation I: hunting, gathering, fishing, herding, agriculture 6. Subsistence as adaptation II: risk, time, intensification, institutions, markets 7. Ecosystems: balance, complexity, disturbance, and resilience 8. Complex Socio-Ecological systems: firescapes, waterscapes, etc. 9. Population pressure, production, consumption, and waste 10. Common property management/governance, collective action, cooperation, and conflict 11. Adaptation to extreme environments, disasters, and climate change 12. Robust and resilient human-nature systems
Syllabus