Sustainability, Diversity, and Inclusion

The course seeks to address the social movements of "sustainability" and "inclusion" with a focus on their respective claims regarding "(bio)diversity" as essential to a healthy planet and an equitable society. These principles will be explored in the context of our contemporary geopolitics and political economy to examine why difference is often - to the contrary - characterized by inequality. Furthermore, scholarship in sociobiology and sustainable development will raise our consciousness about how the destruction of the material world is intimately tied to increasing stratification in the social world. Finally, we will turn our attention to the culture wars: great disagreements, misunderstandings, and contests of expressive values that include inauthentic and well-intentioned ignorance and inconsistency regarding these social movements. In this context we will also consider the political economy of knowing and being to define our own praxes for living in and making a more enduring and just social world.