Australia

This course offers students an opportunity to examine how environmental politics are played out within society. Students examine the intersection of environmental concerns, power relations, advocacy, and activism. The study of advocacy and activism campaigns and case studies focus on mapping the evolution of a controversy, teasing out the distinctions between advocacy and activism, analysing the role of popular culture, managing social and traditional media, and identifying successful interventions that have an impact on environmental policy and decision making processes. Key questions explored during the course include: How do citizens make sense of and respond to initiatives that have potentially damaging consequences for society?; How do science, business and activists attempt to persuade?; How are power relations invoked, challenged and negated within environmental advocacy and activist campaigns?; and What role does popular culture play in creating and sustaining particular valuing systems and cultures?

This course examines what philosophy is by looking at the works of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Sartre, Fanon, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty.