Module GEOG42015: Climate Change and Society

Department: Geography

GEOG42015: Climate Change and Society

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• Expand comprehension of the diverse social and political dimensions of climate change—both leading to and resulting from it; as well as its experienced impacts and geographically grounded risks and vulnerabilities.
• Through a focus on climate risks, climate adaptation and climate resilience, critically evaluate diverse ways in which climate change may be understood as a more-than-biophysical phenomenon, and how different problem framings affect responses and outcomes in practice.
• Develop an advanced appreciation for how geographical context, social difference and inequality shape uneven impacts and response capabilities in the face of climate change-related destabilisations.

Content

• Climate change is a global process, yet one experienced differently in particular places and sites, and within complex pre-existing legacies of difference and inequality. Where, how and for whom its arriving impacts matters for the challenge of building sustainable futures. So too does how climate change is understood within today’s broader ecological, social and political crisis, and the varying responses and outcomes different problem framings may shape in practice. How can climate risks, framings and responses be understood in geographically informed and situated ways? How can we use topical, theoretical and conceptual toolkits derived from geography and the social sciences to critically assess what varying responses may do to advance—or impede—sustainable futures for all?
• The module advances such questioning via a mix of advanced topical, theoretical and conceptual grounding; engaged exploration and discussion; and deeper dives on particular place- and site-based cases which exemplify important questions, challenges and/or opportunities towards just and sustainable futures under climate change. The module’s mix of lecture- and seminar- based instruction is designed to foster engaged learning and support through a variety of learning styles. A focus on place- and site-based cases throughout will model how empirical, theoretical and conceptual toolkits derived from geography and the social sciences can be critically applied in practice. In module assessments, students will solidify their understanding of these tools and apply them to develop their own original place- or site-based climate risk case.
• Indicative Content:
• 1) Building an Empirical, Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: establishing lectures and seminar sessions will address key approaches to the following.
• Understanding climate change impacts in place: understanding climate change-related destabilizations as physically diverse and geographically grounded, including within places’ existing legacies of socio-environmental transformation.
• Questioning various ways in which climate change is socially and politically framed: considering how climate change-related destabilisations become perceived and narrated as climate risks or as challenges/pathways towards adaptation and resilience. This includes an analysis of, when looking at a diversity of climate framings and interventions, for whom and by whom. How have (or have not) evolving debates framed particular places and sites in today’s interconnected geographies as spaces of concern and areas for problem-solving? Questioning how ways of understanding and narrating climate change helps in shaping varying practical responses, outcomes and imagined sustainable futures.
• Interpreting climate risks, climate adaptation and climate resilience within intersecting legacies of difference and inequality: introducing and relating major theoretical frameworks and concepts, with a focus on how scholars and practitioners explain and problematize uneven social experiences of climate risk, both within and between places.
• 2) Place- and Site-Based Applications: succeeding lectures and seminars will model how this geographically informed toolkit can advance understanding of climate risk cases in particular places and/or sites in today’s interconnected global systems. Relevant cases might include, but are not limited to:
• Critical investigation/s of climate change ‘hotspots’: places narrated as particularly at-risk.
• Commanding heights understandings of climate risk: how powerful actors like financial regulators, Big Tech, insurance companies and/or transnational corporations see climate risk to certain sites and processes of concern.
• Neglected or sidelined geographies of climate risk: places, sites, experiences and more that may be being sidelined or under-examined amid today’s broader policy-crisis, particularly in the global South/majority world.
• Seeing climate risk like a state: shifting geopolitics of climate risk and security.
• Climate mobility/immobility: the relationship between climate risk and ‘climate mobility/immobility’ at various scales e.g., planetary, regional, national and urban.

Learning Outcomes

• Have advanced topical knowledge of how climate change, its impacts and risk experiences manifest in diverse and geographically grounded ways.
• Via engaging relevant theories and concepts, understand varying ways in which climate risk is framed as a problem and how such problem framings help shape responses and outcomes in practice.
• Have geographically informed knowledge of how difference and inequality shape uneven experiences of climate risk and resilience.

• Ability to relate global climatic changes to felt impacts and experiences in specific places and sites.
• Capacity to critically explore and debate theories and concepts relevant in understanding varying climate risk narratives, responses and outcomes; including relevant expressions of difference and inequality.
• Ability to apply this geographically informed topical, theoretical and conceptual toolkit to develop original case-based research.

• Capacity to think critically and solve problems.
• Ability to apply knowledge and conduct original research.
• Capacity to write and communicate effectively.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures will introduce core topical material, theories and concepts. Each lecture will be paired with a seminar, in which students will engage in more depth with specific theories, concepts and/or applied topical cases through a range of learning activities.
• In the module’s summative assessment each individual student will research and write a place- or site-based climate risk, adaptation and resilience case, drawing on module content and original research.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Building toward the summative, in the module workshop each individual student will propose an original place- or site-based climate risk, adaptation and resilience case for initial peer and instructor feedback. They will also receive feedback across multiple seminars.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.