Introduction and Blog

Welcome to the blog for Nature and World Cultures, an upper division American Studies/Environmental Studies course at San Jose State University. My name is Prof. Ormsbee, and I'm the professor for the course and the moderator of the blog. Please find below a rules for posting on the blog and a description of the contents of the course.

GENERAL BLOG RULES: The purpose of this blog is to create a forum for students to explore in more depth the topics of the course, and to open up the possibility for engagement with other readers. Because the primary purpose of the blog is educational, I will carefully moderate to ensure a learning environment and experience for my students. Because we will be addressing issues that may be controversial, some rules are necessary:

• Students are required to maintain a degree of anonymity on this blog for obvious reasons. They may use nicknames, screen names, or just their first name without any identifying markers. I am not anonymous, however, and my faculty web page can be found here.
• Student posts and comments are meant to follow a high standard of argumentation. They will be striving to introduce criticism, analysis, argumentation, and evidence to the conversations about these topics. They are being graded on their participation.
• This is not a free speech, anything-goes, free-for-all blog. All participants should consider two key ethical concerns: a) mutual respect and consideration for participants on the blog; and b) objective and fair treatment of the issues and cultures treated. Note: Objectivity does not mean that posters will not be critical; rather, it means that their analyses and criticism will be based in evidence and argumentation.
• Non-students may comment, but will be carefully moderated to maintain the blog as an educational space. Ad hominem, vulgarity, personal attacks, and hostile comments will be deleted.
• Disagreements are welcome, but should be presented in respectful and constructive ways. Both tone and content should be carefully composed before posting.

THE COURSE: In this section of Nature and World Cultures, we will be working to understand the intricate link between the physical environment and the ideas, symbols, stories, and representations that human create to understand their environments; then we will seek to understand how those ideas about “Nature” in turn cause human beings to act in particular ways vis-à-vis the environment. Our inquiry will be interdisciplinary, drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, cognitive science, and history. We will divide the course into three sections:

1. Naturalism: What is the connection between our biological evolution as human beings and our cultural understanding of and use of “nature”? How do our bodies and our physical environments combine to form ideas and meaningful lives, and how do we in turn transform our physical environments to meet our cultural expectations of “nature”?
2. Culture and Environment: How have various societies structured their relationships to their environments? What impact did they have over time? Why did they destroy their environments? Or conversely, how did they arrive at a homeostasis or sustainable lifestyle? How do social structures and cultures affect the way people interact with the environment; how does the environment shape social structures and cultures?
3. Contemporary Cultural Views of Nature, Globalization, and Global Environmentalism: What has changed in human beings’ relationship to the environment since industrialization in the 19th century and globalization in the 20th century? What effect are our cultures and especially consumer culture having on the environment? How are world cultures connected, even though they are so different from each other, vis-à-vis the environment? How does culture both support and resist globalization and the interaction of global capitalism with the environment?

For a detailed introduction to the American Studies program at SJSU, please see the program's MySpace page or Facebook Group.