Science, Environment, and Society in East Asia
Undergraduate seminar, University of Washington, Jackson School of International Studies, 2021
How do humans affect the natural environment, and how does the environment affect society? How does society affect scientific knowledge, and vice versa? How do interactions between all three complicate our understandings of major global issues such as disease pandemics, food security and sovereignty, climate change, pollution, etc.? This course explores questions of agency, including how non-human actors such as plants, animals, microbes, minerals, and water interact with humans to create complicated networks of dependencies and influences. Objects of study include sugar, rubber, trees, viruses, fungi, whales, dust, rivers, and, of course, humans. We will also deal with human-generated structures, i.e. capitalism, politics, and public health, that are key to understanding major environmental and scientific issues such as resource exploitation, pandemic controls, and vaccination campaigns.