Geography 130 - Food & The Environment (Summer 2017)

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GEOGRAPHY 130: FOOD AND THE ENVIRONMENT
UC BERKELEY – SUMMER SESSION 2017
INSTRUCTOR: MELEIZA FIGUEROA
 

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“In sharing the necessity of daily bread, you meet hundreds of people every day.
Do not forget that they are people, not numbers; each one with his burden of pain that at times seems impossible to bear.
By always keeping this in mind, you will be able to look them in the face, to look them in the eye,
to shake their hand, to...help them to win back their dignity and get back on their feet.”

– Pope Francis –

  

Food is a basic human need. Regardless of who we are or what we believe, we must eat – and actively reproduce a fundamental cycle of biological production and consumption common to virtually all life on earth. Acts of procuring and consuming food are universal human experiences; but one that manifests in immensely diverse social and material forms. Food systems as lived – in innumerable individual and collective practices shaped by intersecting economic, environmental, political, and cultural influences – reflect our social, historical, and global interconnections back to us as ‘visceral’ experiences.

In this course, we examine the material mechanisms through which humans have manipulated ecological systems to produce food, as well as the cultural practices, scientific paradigms, and forms of meaning by which people interpret and navigate the complex relationships with nature – and each other – on which our survival depends. We will explore how food systems are developed, undone, and reworked throughout human history, to understand how societies produce social natures through food: the socio-ecological relations that form and inform agricultural systems; dynamics of risk, resilience and vulnerability to stochastic events such as war, famine and climate change; and the emerging conflicts and contradictions between food production and distribution, abundance and hunger, profit and sustainability.

 

Download the Syllabus for this CourseLinks to an external site. 

 

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LECTURE SLIDES

 

Week 1: Thinking About Food Systems

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Lecture 1-1: Human/Environment Dynamics and Agricultural Systems

Lecture 1-2: Theoretical Foundations Part 1 - Malthus / Ricardo / Marx

Lecture 1-3: Theoretical Foundations Part 2 - A 'People-Centered' Approach to Food Systems

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Week 2: Ecologies of Colonialism, Slavery, and Resistance

 

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Lecture 2-1: The World in 1491: European, Indigenous, and African Foodscapes

Lecture 2-2: Transformations of the Columbian Exchange

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Week 3: Capitalism and Industrialization Remake the Food Chain

 

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Lecture 3-1: Subsistence is Resistance: Commodification and its Discontents
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Lecture 3-2: Railroads, Futures and the Commodification of Space and Time

Lecture 3-3: Famines & Natural Disasters in the Age of Market Society

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Week 4: The Green Revolution and the Conquest of Cheap Food

 

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Lecture 4-1: Building Blocks of the Green Revolution: Surplus, Industry, Science, War

Lecture 4-2: The Green Revolution as Geopolitical and Financial Instrument

Lecture 4-3: Land Grabs and Big Macs: Everyday Life Along the Corporate Food Chain

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Week 5: The Revenge of Nature: Crises of the Planet & the Body

 

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Lecture 5-1: Climate Change and Human Catastrophe

Lecture 5-2: Heat Waves, Pandemics, Obesity & Chronic Disease

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Week 6: Towards a Paradigm Shift

 

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Lecture 6-1: Society in Revolt - Food Riots & the Global Crisis

Lecture 6-2: Reform or Revolution? Frameworks for a Paradigm Shift

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