Postgraduate - UnitAPG5425 - Perspectives on environment and sustainability

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2013 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Sustainability Environment and Society
Offered	Clayton First semester 2013 (Evening)
Coordinator(s)	Professor Rebekah Brown

Notes

Previously coded ENV5020

Synopsis

People's approaches to environmental issues (what they see as problems and what they see as solutions) vary widely based on worldviews, assumptions, and value systems. This unit develops students' capacity to critically evaluate differing ideological, philosophical, and disciplinary approaches to environment and sustainability, such as positivistic science, technology, systems theory, social ecology, indigenous worldviews, deep ecology, bioregionalism, poststructuralism, neoliberalism, and sustainability science. Throughout, it will explore the implications of these approaches for policymaking, disciplinary research, environmental management, and political processes and action.

Outcomes

Students successfully completing this unit will be expected to demonstrate:

A thorough grasp of the ideas and assumptions behind a range of key perspectives on the environment and sustainability.
An ability to recognize and analyse different philosophical and ideological perspectives on the environment in use (in writing, in speech, in political positions',...).
A capacity to understand the perspectives of different disciplines within an interdisciplinary context.
Skills in analysing the implications of differing environmental perspectives on practical courses of action and policy-making.
Skills in constructing critical and analytical arguments, in oral and written form, relevant to discussions of environmental worldviews and philosophies.
An in-depth understanding of the historical roots and current debates within one perspective.