ENVS 656 - Environmental Sociology

Institution:

University of Pennsylvania

Subject:

Description:

Sheehan. The context in which debates take place and decisions and laws about the environment are made, leads to a focus on the community, defined here as workers and residents. Members of urban and rural communities, situated near polluting factories, hazardous sites or landfills, are affected by these contaminants. Using a sociological framework, this course will study the community and its relationship to environmental issues. Community members often first identify local hazards; they form organizations, map polluted sites, and enumerate residents with diseases that may originate from contaminanants. Sociologists identify these grassroots initiatives as community epidemiology. Social justice concepts highlight the intersection of race, poverty, and environmental hazards. Major social institutions corporations, government agencies, health care providers have played a role in covering over occupational and environmental hazards. Worker and community action has forced these institutions to take a role in identification and remediation of hazardous sites, and of continuous monitoring of neighborhoods and residents. In terms of health effects, among citizens, experts, and major institutions, and debates about both the local and global consequences of environmental hazards, will be among the topics covered. The emergence of institutional structures at the local, state, national, and international levels, to deal with environmental protection, identification and testing of hazards, and establishing limits for exposure, will be examined. The course will include readings on significant contemporary and historical occupational and environmental events in the United States. In addition, selected, international case studies of occupational and environmental issues will be undertaken.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.upenn.edu

Phone Number:

(215) 898-5000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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