2018-2019 Academic Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

GEOG 320 - Capitalist Natures


This graduate seminar will examine classical, recent, and current works in geography and related fields that examine the particular ways in which capitalist societies interact with and transform their environments. Major themes will include: 1) Potential tensions or contradictions between the functioning of capitalist and biophysical systems, including the possibility of natural limits to capitalist economic growth; 2) The characteristic ways in which capitalism internalizes nature into circuits of capital, through the creation of real or fictitious commodities; 3) The ways in which the characteristics of natural systems present specific obstacles to and/or opportunities for capital accumulation; 4) The ways in which capitalism does not merely confront ‘external’ environments, but physically remakes them; 5) The distinctive dynamics of environmental social movements and politics generated by the above processes.

 

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year