MSc Sociological Research / Course details

This course offers and account of 'the environmental movement' as a constellation of organisations, beliefs and actions that has developed at multiple scales of activity across the world since around the 1960s. Social movements are typically associated with protest, and while that is undoubtedly true for the environmental movement, it has many other forms of strategic action: from encouraging people to change the mundane practices of their everyday life, to participating in global conferences attempting to get all nations acting in concert. One purpose of this course, then, is to identify and explain the different guises under which environmental action takes place.  

The unit aims to:

• Introduce a selection of theories of environmental movement action focused on their strategic and relational characteristics.  

 

• Explore a range of issue domains in which environmental activism and advocacy have played a key role.  

 

• Develop a framework for explaining social change processes relating to environmental action. 

1. Identify issue domains in which environment-society relations may be studied 2. Explain and interpret environmental activism and advocacy in relation to selected issue domains covered on the course 3. Select and apply an appropriate theory for understanding environmental movement action 4. Identify and interpret high quality sources of information, relevant for the task at hand 5. Communicate complex information in a concise and clearly structured document 6. Produce empirically grounded results from library-based research in written work

Syllabus (indicative curriculum content):  

1. A brief history of the global environmental movement  

2. Theorising environmental movements  

3. Activism and advocacy through strategic interaction  

4. Conserving 'nature'  

5. Politicising consumption  

6. Resisting resource extraction  

7. Producing agricultural alternatives  

8. Contesting climate change  

9. Pursuing environmental justice  

10. Summary and assessment workshop: applying theory to cases 

Lecture-workshops (20 hours total, 2 hours per week, synchronous) and seminars/tutorials (10 hours total, 1 hour per week, synchronous).

Student participation in seminars will be based on academic readings in all sessions. In addition, students will be set information gathering tasks throughout weeks 4-9, when we will be covering different environmental issues. Students will be expected to share information sources with the class and we will discuss what kinds of sources support different kinds of analysis. 

It is anticipated that students on this course will be considering either moving on towards a PhD, or else looking for graduate level careers, with the latter potentially involving work in relation to environmental policy, advocacy, reporting and so on. The substantive knowledge, both theoretical and empirical will be valuable in either case. The course makes use of up-to-date theoretical and empirical resources that could well form an introduction to a PhD in a cognate area, as well as informing students of the various actors involved in different environment issue domains.

The more practical and transferable skills on the course are clearly pertinent for those going on to a PhD, but equally useful for a huge range of professional careers in which navigating, selecting, interpreting and presenting quality information is a key skill. The two options on assessment potentially allow for students to develop slightly different writing styles (i.e. a scholarly essay or a structured report) that would be relevant for different career pathways. 

Cassegard, C., Soneryd, L., Thorn, H., & Wettergren, À. (Eds.). (2017). Climate Action in a Globalizing World: Comparative Perspectives on Environmental Movements in the Global North. Routledge.  

Doyle, T., & MacGregor, S. (Eds.). (2013). Environmental movements around the world: Shades of green in politics and culture. ABC-CLIO.  

Eastwood, L. E. (2018). Negotiating the Environment: Civil Society, Globalisation and the UN. Routledge.  

Nulman, E. (2016). Climate Change and Social Movements: Civil Society and the Development of National Climate Change Policy. Springer.  

Radkau, J. (2014). The age of ecology: A global history. Polity Press.