English

This course introduces general concepts of environment, natural resources, and sustainable development. The topics include pressing global, regional and local environmental changes; life-supporting systems of our planet; biodiversity and its conservation; atmosphere, water resources, and their pollutions; solid and hazardous waste management; environmental health and sustainable development. The course provides a better understanding of the root-causes of the upfront environmental issues.

This course focuses on ethics through a political and social perspective. Students learn to undertake a philosophical assessment of an ethical theory topic on meaning in life, and learn to present philosophical ideas verbally in a group setting. Students demonstrate in a research essay and a short in-class presentation what they have learned about ethical theory in the political domain.

This course provides an advanced introduction to contemporary political theory. Both parts of the course engage normative- and critical-theoretical texts by considering present-day political and social problems. Part One investigates political-theoretical concepts and arguments in view of increasingly precarious social and economic conditions for much of the world’s population. What norms of justice, equality, and liberty might justify efforts to redistribute material resources? How have recent changes in capitalism affected human desires with regard to work, work’s products, and work-based relationships, and what new forms of freedom or submission might such altered desires promote? Part Two confronts pressing questions that stem from climate change, global migration, and racial and colonial violence. What shifts in modern notions of nature-human relations might climate change spur and under what political conditions would people respond to these ethical imperatives? What obligations does a political society have to migrants and what new conceptions of political agency might migrants’ work and political ventures suggest? What are the sources of colonial and racial violence, and what ethical and political commitments should anti-racist and decolonizing responses entail? Teaching 15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the MT. 15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT. 1 hour and 30 minutes of lectures in the ST. There will be reading weeks in MT Week 6 and LT Week 6. Formative coursework Students are expected to submit two formative essays in MT and a mock exam paper in LT. The course requires students to organize their workloads, to complete readings in advance of lectures, and to prepare to participate actively in seminars. The course thus emphasizes the development of verbal and written communication abilities. Students also should expect to tackle basic questions about what it means to write political theory by exploring tensions and affinities between normative/ethical and critical-theoretical approaches. Indicative reading John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice”; Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice”; Kathi Weeks, “The Problem with Work”; Jacques Rancière, “Disagreement”; David Schlosberg, “Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism”; Joseph Carens, “The Ethics of Immigration”; Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”; Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj”; James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time” Assessment Exam (60%, duration: 2 hours) in the summer exam period. Essay (40%, 2000 words) in the LT. GENERAL COURSE STUDENTS ONLY: The Class Summary Grade for General Course students will be calculated as follows:15% class participation, 50% assessed coursework, 30% formative coursework (15% per assignment), and 5% attendance.

This course examines Hong Kong as a Chinese global city and its position in relation to the Pearl River Delta and China's national economy. By understanding Hong Kong as both Chinese (Cantonese-speaking) by majority and a global finance center by historical construction, basic readings on urban sociology, global cities and Hong Kong studies are introduced. The course examines Hong Kong's position in the Asia region and the multiple challenges facing the city, including global economics and China's rapid development as well as current debates on democracy and civic society. This course is divided into three components with the first part focusing on the historical perspective of Hong Kong by studying the inter-relations between colonial government administration and policies, manufacturing industries and migration patterns. The second part explores the rise of the middle class and their consumption practices in the city. The complex anxieties surrounding the year 1997 are discussed in relation to its historical significance in political, economic and socio-cultural terms. The last component investigates how Hong Kong measures up to the standards of being a Chinese global city and addresses future issues facing the ongoing development of Hong Kong in the larger schema of China's global economy and its impact on local understandings / identity crises of the city's positioning.

This course covers the processes regulating states and flows of mass and energy in the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. The course emphasizes the energy exchange and water cycle. It also offers an in-depth overall picture of the system as well as the interactions between the various physical and biological processes. Students learn measuring techniques for relevant variables and parameters in an ecosystem. This knowledge is crucial for developing sustainable ways to manage land-based ecosystems. The course provides broad and advanced theory of the most important energy exchange processes in the interface between the atmosphere and the vegetation/land mass. In order to analyze the interplay between different processes within ecosystems, students use a simulation model of the energy exchange and the water-balance. The course also instructs students on how to use sensor technology and methods to measure and store abiotic and biotic variables and parameters using data logs and other instruments.