MA Environmental Politics

[Please note: this programme is already run by Keele University's School of Politics and Philosophy See Keele Environmental Politics]

Overview

Environmental problems are indisputably a part of the contemporary political landscape. Societies across the globe increasingly confront innumerable and often inter-related environmental challenges ranging from climate change and loss of biodiversity to contaminated watercourses and local conflicts about land-use. Each of these challenges has political, economic, cultural and ethical dimensions; each provides an opportunity to rethink longstanding debates and very often opens up new fields of political enquiry and analysis.

The aim of the Masters programme is to provide students with the tools to think critically about the politics of the environment. Thinking critically involves considering complex questions from a number of different angles, such as:

• Institutionally, how do political structures respond to environmental problems and how might they be improved?
• Conceptually, how have different theorists conceived the environmental problematic; what do the various ideologies of environmental politics have to offer?
• Ethically, how ought we to think about and treat the nonhuman world?
• Sociologically, what drives the politics of environmental movements and how do society's cleavages both reflect and create environmental problems?
• Internationally, how do environmental politics work in different countries and in the international arena?
• Politically, how are environmental policies made and what are the obstacles to be overcome and the opportunities to be grasped?