Handbook

Subject Area: Environmental Humanities

Environmental Advocacy and Activism offers you an opportunity to examine how environmental politics play out within society. You will examine advocacy and activism campaigns and case studies focusing on mapping the evolution of a controversy, teasing out the distinctions between advocacy and activism, analysing the role of popular culture, managing social and traditional media and identifying successful interventions that have an impact on environmental policy and decision making processes. Key questions that you will explore during the course include How do citizens make sense of and respond to initiatives that have potentially damaging consequences for society?; How do science, business and activists attempt to persuade?; How are power relations invoked, challenged and negated within environmental advocacy and activist campaigns?; and What role does popular culture play in creating and sustaining particular valuing systems and cultures?'