SOC2030 - Community and Environmental Sociology

Credits
3 (3/0/0)
Description
Meets MnTC Goal Areas 5 and 10. Students will use the sociological perspective to examine the relationship between the social and physical environment. The course evaluates the ways in which the environment, sustainability, resources, and conflict are embedded within broader cultural, social, health, economic, and political contexts. Students will seek to understand environmental stewardship and social justice while considering intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender.
Competencies
  1. Understand and apply major sociological paradigms in relationship to our interaction with the physical environment, environmental stewardship, and social justice.
  2. Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures.
  3. Employ the methods for data collection used by historians and social and behavioral scientists to investigate the human condition.
  4. Develop and communicate alternative explanations and/or solutions for contemporary environmental and social issues.
  5. Become familiar with actors in the social practices, processes, and institutions that affect our communities and the environment, including government, corporations, transnational institutions, and social movements.
  6. Critically evaluate environmental and natural resource issues in light of understandings about interrelationships, ecosystems, and institutions.
  7. Understand and articulate how race, class, gender, and citizenship and immigration status intersect in humans’ relationships with one another and the environment.
  8. Describe the basic institutional arrangements (social, legal, medical, political, economic, and religious) that are evolving to deal with environmental and natural resource challenges.
  9. Examine personal values and develop action plans outlining personal responsibilities in reference to environmental justice.
Goal Areas
5. History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences
10. People and the Environment