Benny C Marcus
June 20, 2013
... M 3/18
Pellow, chap. 3: “Transnational Movement Networks for Environmental Justice”
Recommended: Bb Moghadam: “The Global Justice Movement”
W 3/20
Pellow, chap. 4: “The Global Village Dump: Trashing the Planet,” pp. 97–107
Pellow, chap. 5: “Ghosts of the Green Revolution: Pesticides Poison the Global South,” pp. 147–58
Pellow, chap. 6: “Electronic Waste: The ‘Clean Industry’ Exports Its Trash,” pp. 185–195
Recommended: Bb Leonard: “Disposal”
In-class screening: Selections from Connecting People: The Human Cost of Mobile Phones
F 3/22
Pellow, chap. 4: “The Global Village Dump: Trashing the Planet,” pp. 107 – 23
Pellow, chap. 5: “Ghosts of the Green Revolution: Pesticides Poison the Global South,” pp. 162–81
Recommended: Bb Auyero and Swistun: “Villas del Riachuelo: Life amid Hazards, Garbage, and Poison”
In-class screening: The Wasteland (13 min.)
M 3/25
Pellow, chap. 7 “Theorizing Global Environmental Inequality and Global Social Movements for Human Rights and Environmental Justice”
ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION
W 3/27
Bb von Weisäcker et al., Introduction, “Factor Five: The Global Imperative,” pp. 8–17
Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution with Amory Lovins (87 min.) http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Natural-Capitalism-The-Next-Industrial-Revolution-15123
Recommended: Bb Mann: “What If We Never Run Out of Oil?”
F 3/29
Bb von Weisäcker et al., chap. 8: “Addressing the Rebound Dilemma”
Bb von Weisäcker et al., chap. 9: “A Long-Term Ecological Tax Reform,” pp. 313–315
Recommended: Bb Jorgenson and Clark: “Are the Economy and the Environment Decoupling? A Comparative International Study, 1960–2005,” pp. 1–13, 34, 28–33 (I recommend you look at the table on p. 34 before you read the conclusions, pp. 28–33.)
In-class screening: Impacts and Sustainability: Issues in Globalization (25 min.)
GREEN CONCIOUSNESS
M 4/1
Bb Franke: “Ecovillage Ithaca: Laboratory for Sustainability?” Parts 1 & 2 and
Permaculture: EcoVillage at Ithaca (13 min.) http://vimeo.com/34059788
Recommended: Bb Schumacher: “Buddhist Economics”
W 4/3
Bb Chitewere & Taylor: “Sustainable Living and Community Building at Ecovillage Ithaca: The Challenges of Incorporating Social Justice Concerns into the Practices of an Ecological Cohousing Community”
In-class screening: Selections from The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
F 4/5
First Earth: Uncompromising Ecological Architecture ( 87 min.) http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/first-earth-uncompromising-ecological-architecture/
Recommended: Bb Kennedy et al.: “The Context for Natural Building,” pp. 5–34
M 4/8
Exam 2 on material 3/4−4/5, inclusive
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
W 4/10
Speth: “Preface,” and “Introduction: Between Two Worlds”
Recommended: Bb Bhagwati: “Environment in Peril?”
F 4/12
Speth, chap. 2: “Modern Capitalism: Out of Control”
Recommended: Bb Magdoff and Foster: “The Growth Imperative of Capitalism”
In-class screening: Selections from Food, Inc.
M 4/15
Speth, chap. 3: “The Limits of Today’s Environmentalism”
Recommended: Bb Brulle: “U.S. Environmental Movements”
W 4/17
Speth, chap. 4: “The Market: Making It Work for the Environment”
Recommended: Bb Daly: “Limits to Growth” and “Economics in a Full World”
F 4/19
Speth, chap. 5: “Economic Growth: Moving to a Post-Growth Society”
Recommended: Bb Smith and Max-Neef: “Economic Growth”
M 4/22
Speth, chap. 6: “Real Growth: Promoting the Well-Being of People and Nature”
Recommended: Bb Diener and Seligman: “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” pp. 201–06 and 249–53.
W 4/24
Speth, chap. 7: “Consumption: Living with Enough, Not Always More”
Recommended: Bb Smith and Max-Neef: “A Humane Economics for the Twenty-First Century”
In-class screening: Selections from Bhutan: The Height of Happiness?
F 4/26
Speth, chap. 8: “The Corporation: Changing the Fundamental Dynamics”
Recommended: Bb Campbell: “Corporate Power: The Role of Global Media in Shaping What We Know About the Environment”
M 4/29
Heat: A Global Investigation (120:00) http://libproxy.temple.edu/login?url=http://digital.films.com.libproxy.temple.edu/PortalPlaylists.aspx?aid=1627&xtid=40941
W 5/1
Speth, chap. 9: “Capitalism’s Core: Advancing Beyond Today’s Capitalism”
Recommended: Bb The International Forum on Globalization: “Report Summary: A Better World Is Possible: Alternatives to Globalization”
F 5/3
Speth, chap. 10: “A New Consciousness”
Speth, chap. 11: “A New Politics”
Speth, chap. 12: “The Bridge at the Edge of the World”
M 5/6
Exam 3 on material 4/10–5/3, inclusive
M 5/13
Term Paper due by 10:00 a.m.
ESSAY QUESTIONS FOR EXAM 1
Speth, chap. 1
Describe the environmental “abyss” that Speth says we are looking into.
Barbosa
Explain the treadmill of production perspective.
Explain the world-systems perspective and why it is relevant to environmental issues.
Explain the ecological modernization perspective.
Explain the risk society perspective.
Dryzek, chap. 1
Explain the concept of discourse, including the elements of discourse, the relationships between power and discourse, and the usefulness of discourse for environmental sociology.
Dryzek, chap. 2
Explain the argument of survivalism, incorporating such concepts as carrying capacity, the tragedy of the commons, overshoot and collapse, exponential growth, limits to growth, and steady-state economics. Why has the survivalist discourse had little impact on policy?
Dryzek, chap. 3
Explain the Promethean argument, its impact on the organization of social systems, and its primary theoretical shortcomings.
Dryzek, Chap. 6
Explain the argument and practical problems of economic rationalism as a solution to environmental problems.
Dryzek, Chap. 7
Describe the discourse of sustainable development and discusss the obstacles to implementing policies that would produce sustainable development.
Dryzek, chap. 8
Explain the argument of ecological modernization. Discuss the criticisms of the argument and practice of ecological modernization as a solution to environmental problems.
Dryzek, chap. 9
Compare and contrast the deep ecology and ecofeminism discourses.
Explain the discourse of green consciousness and assess the argument that cultural transformation is necessary but not sufficient to address environmental problems.
Dryzek, chap. 10
Describe the discourse of green politics and assess its impact on social arrangements.
Gould, Pellow, and Schnaiberg
Explain why treadmill theory focuses on production rather than consumption. What does this imply for theories of individual choice in regard to responsibilities for environmental deterioration and opportunities for environmental improvement and sustainability?
Rudel, Roberts, and Carmine
Describe the following “productivist” theories of the political economy of the environment—the treadmill of production, the growth machine, and ecologically unequal exchange—and explain how the global environmental movement modified these theories.
Mohai, Pellow, and Roberts
Explain the concept of environmental injustice, its empirical bases, and why it remains contentious.
Explain the economic, sociopolitical, and cultural theories of the origins of racial environmental injustice.
ESSAY QUESTIONS FOR EXAM 2
Pellow, chap. 1
Explain why the concept of environmental (in)justice requires a transnational perspective and why “[t]ransnational justice offenses require transnational responses” (p. 2). How are environmental injustices in the global waste trade carried out through hierarchies of race, class, and nation?
Pellow, chap. 2
Pellow argues that “the domination of the environment is actually reflective of the domination of human beings” (p. 46). Explain the relationships between the production and distribution of environmental toxins and the production of social “toxins”—the creation of inequalities by race, class, and world region.
Pellow, chap. 3
Explain why different organizations within the global environmental justice movement(s) tend to frame their activities differently by emphasizing inequalities by race, class, or world region. How might an emphasis on human rights overcome these differences?
Pellow, chap. 7
Explain why the environmental justice movement in the United States is weaker, measured by its successes, than the environmental justice movement in the geographical global south. What is the “hyperspatiality of environmental risk” and why is networking by social movements across geographic and social borders necessary to fully address it? What is the significance of the concept of human rights in this regard?
von Weisäcker et al., Introduction
Explain the argument that the next Kondratieff cycle will be “green” and resource productivity will grow faster than labor productivity, at least in industrialized countries.
von Weisäcker et al., chaps. 8 & 9
Explain the rebound effect (the Jevon’s paradox) and the authors’ solution for it.
Chitewere & Taylor
Explain why the ecovillage movement tends not to address issues of environmental justice. Why might ecovillages fall short of achieving environmental sustainability?
ESSAY QUESTIONS FOR EXAM 3
Speth, chap. 2
Speth argues that “[c]apitalism as we know it today is incapable of sustaining the environment.”
Explain his argument, using such concepts as exponential growth, market failure, externalities, perverse subsidies, globalization, the golden straightjacket, resource productivity, decoupling/dematerialization, resource throughput, and the environmental Kuznets curve. What is the role of the modern state in the relationship between the capitalist economy and the environment?
Speth, chap. 3
Explain the argument that mainstream environmentalism has been, and will continue to be, largely ineffectual.
Speth, chap. 4
Explain the environmental economics approach to environmental problems and criticisms with this approach.
Speth, chap. 5
Explain Speth’s argument that continued economic growth is most likely inconsistent with environmental sustainability, particularly regarding global warming.
Speth, chap. 6
Explain why GDP is flawed as a measure of welfare and why economic growth may make us worse off rather than better off. Discuss alternative measures—the Human Development Index, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, and the Happy Planet Index—and their relationship to GDP.
Speth, chap. 7
Explain the potential benefits and limitations of green consumerism as a solution to problems of environmental sustainability and the argument that reduced consumption is necessary.
Speth, chap. 8
Explain the argument that achieving environmental sustainability requires not only reforming the corporation through voluntary initiatives and governmental regulation but also fundamentally restructuring the corporation to serve public rather than private interests.
Speth, chap. 9, 10, & 11
Describe “the nonsocialist alternative to today’s capitalism” that Speth argues could “transform the market and consumerism, redesign corporations, and focus growth on high-priority human and environmental needs.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allegre, Claude et al. 2012. “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” Wall Street Journal January 27, p. A15.
Auyero, Javier and Débora Alejandra Swistun. 2009. “Villas del Riachuelo: Life amid Hazards, Garbage, and Poison.” Pp. 21–27 in Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown, by J. Auyero and D. A. Swistun. New York: Oxford.
Barbosa, Luiz C. 2009. “Theories in Environmental Sociology.” Pp. 25-44 in Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology, edited by K.A. Gould and T.L. Lewis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Beck, Ulrich and Johannes Willms. 2004. “Global Risk Society.” Pp. 109–52 in Conversations with Ulrich Beck, by U. Beck and J. Willms. Malden MA: Polity Press distributed in the U.S. by Blackwell Publishing.
Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2007. “Environment in Peril?” Pp. 135-61 in In Defense of Globalization, by J. Bhagwati. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bookchin, Murray. 1989. “Society and Ecology.” Pp. 19-39 in Remaking Society, by M. Bookchin. New York, NY: Black Rose Books.
Brulle, Robert J. 2009. “U.S. Environmental Movements.” Pp. 211–227 in Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology, edited by K.A. Gould and T.L. Lewis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, Elizabeth H. 2009. “Corporate Power: The Role of Global Media in Shaping What We Know About the Environment.” Pp. 68–84 in Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology, edited by K.A. Gould and T.L. Lewis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Chitewere, Tendai and Dorceta E. Taylor. 2010. “Sustainable Living and Community Building in Ecovillage at Ithaca.” Pp. 141-76 in Environment and Social Justice: An International Perspective, edited by D.E. Taylor. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
Daly, Herman E. “Limits to Growth” and “Economics in a Full World.” Pp. 9-24 in Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development, Selected Essays of Herman Daly, by H.E. Daly. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Devall, Bill. 2003. “The Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: 1960-2000—A Review.” Pp. 311-26 in Environment, Energy, and Society: Exemplary Works, edited by C.R. Humphrey, T.L. Lewis, and F.H. Buttell. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Diener, Ed and Martin E.P. Seligman. 2009. “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being.” Pp. 201–264 in The Science of Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener, edited by E. Diener. The Netherlands: Springer.
Dryzek, John S. 2005. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Elliot, Jennifer. 2013. “What Is Sustainable Development?” Pp. 8–25 in An Introduction to Sustainable Development, 4th ed., by J. Elliot. New York: Routledge.
Environmental Working Group. 2005. “Body Burden: The Pollution in Newborns.” Accessed May 20, 2013 (http://www.ewg.org/research/body-burden-pollution-newborns)
Foster, John Bellamy. 2009. “Ecological Imperialism: The Curse of Capitalism.” Pp. 233-49 in The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, by J.B. Foster. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
Frickel, Scott. 2010. “Global Environment and Human Development.” Review of Human Development Report 2006: Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis and Human Development Report 2007-2008: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World, both by Kevin Watkins, published by United Nations Development Program. Contemporary Sociology 39(2): 131-4.
Gould, Kenneth A., David N. Pellow, and Allan Schnaiberg. 2004. “Interrogating the Treadmill of Production: Everything You Wanted to Know about the Treadmill of Production but Were Afraid to Ask.” Organization & Environment 17(3):296-316.
Hawken, Paul, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. 2010. “The Next Industrial Revolution.” Pp. 1–21 in Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution. 10th anniversary edition. Washington, DC: Earthscan.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers. Retrieved May 20, 2013 (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf ).
International Forum on Globalization. 2002. Report Summary: A Better World Is Possible: Alternatives to Globalization. Retrieved May 20, 2013 (http://www.ifg.org/alt_eng.pdf)
Jorgenson, Andrew K. and Brett Clark. 2012. “Are the Economy and the Environment Decoupling? A Comparative International Study, 1960–2005. American Journal of Sociology 118(1):1–44.
Kennedy et al. 2002. “The Context for Natural Building’” Pp. 5–34 in The Art of Natural Building: Design, Construction, Resources, edited by J. F. Kennedy, M. G. Smith, and C. Wanek. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers.
Leonard, Annie. 2010. “Extraction” and “Disposal.” Pp. 1–43 and 182–236 in The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—And a Vision for Change, by A. Leonard. New York: Free Press.
Leopold, Aldo. 1949. “Thinking Like a Mountain.” Pp. 129–33 in A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, by A. Leopold. New York: Oxford (Available at http://www.eco-action.org/dt/thinking.html )
Lombørg, Bjorn. 2009. “The Truth about the Environment.” Pp. 74–79 in Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader, edited by J.S. Dryzek and D. Schlosberg. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Magdoff, Harry and John Bellamy Foster. 2011. “The Growth Imperative of Capitalism.” Pp. 37–60 in What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism, by H. Magdoff and J. B. Foster. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Mann, Charles C. 2013. “What If We Never Run Out of Oil?” The Atlantic (May): 48–63.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Retrieved April 16, 2012 (http://www.maweb.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf)
Moghadam, Valentine M. 2009. “The Global Justice Movement.” Pp. 91–117 in Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement, by V. M. Moghadam. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Mohai, Paul, David Pellow, and J. Timmons Roberts. 2009. “Environmental Justice.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34:405-30.
Nature Reports Climate Change. 2009. “Planetary Boundaries.” (Commentary on Rockstrom et al. 2009. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461(24):472–475) Nature online, September 23, 2009. doi:10.1038/climate.2009.92
Nordhaus, William D. 2012. “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong.” New York Review of Books, March 22. Retrieved May 20, 2013 (http://www.nybooks.com.libproxy.temple.edu/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/)
Oreskes, Naomi. 2004. “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Science 306(5702): 1686.
Pellow, David Naguib. 2007. Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pimentel, David. 2002. “Skeptical of the Skeptical Environmentalist.” Review of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, by Bjorn Lombørg. Skeptic 9(2):90-4.
Rockstrom, Johan et al. 2009. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461(24):472–475.
Rudel, Thomas K., J. Timmons Roberts, and JoAnn Carmine. 2011. “Political Economy of the Environment.” Annual Review of Sociology 37:221–38.
Schumacher, E. F. 1973. “Buddhist Economics.” Pp. 48–56 in Small Is Beautiful:A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, by E. F. Schumacher. London: Blond and Briggs.
Shiva, Vandana. 2010 [1988]. “Introduction to the 2010 Edition: The Gendered Politics of Food and the Challenge of Staying Alive.” Pp. xi–xxviii in Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development, by V. Shiva. Brooklyn, NY: South End Press.
Smith, Philip B. and Manfred Max-Neef. 2011. “Economic Growth” and “A Humane Economics for the Twenty-First Century.” Pp. 69–95 and 139–54 in Economics Unmasked: From Power and Greed to Compassion and the Common Good, by P. B. Smith and M. Max-Neef. Dartington Space, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EN: Green Books (http://www.greenbooks.co.uk/).
Speth, James Gustave. 2008. The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Stavins, Robert and Bradley Whitehead. 2009. “Market-Based Environmental Policies.” Pp. 229–38 in Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader, 2nd ed., by J. S. Dryzek and D. Schlosberg. New York: Oxford.
von Weisäcker et al., Ernst Charlie Hargroves, Michael H. Smith, Cheryl Desha, and Peter Stasinopoulos. 2009. Factor Five: Transforming the Global Economy through 80% Improvements in Resource Productivity. Sterling, VA: Earthscan.
World Wide Fund for Nature. 2012. Living Planet Report. Retrieved May 18, 2013 (http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/1_lpr_2012_online_full_size_single_pages_final_120516.pdf)
FILMOGRAPHY
Bhutan: The Height of Happiness? 2008. Produced by Brian Becker. Published by Journeyman Pictures (http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=58461). 52 minutes. Available through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group (http://cambridge.films.com/ItemDetails.aspx?TitleId=25717 ) .
Case Against Shell, The. Center for Constitutional Rights and EarthRights International. Available at http://wiwavshell.org/. 8 minutes.
Connecting People: The Human Cost of Mobile Phones. Published by Nordic World. (http://www.nordicworld.tv/1311/program/program/null ) In Norwegian with subtitles. 88 minutes. Available through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group (http://cambridge.films.com/ItemDetails.aspx?TitleId=25321).
Food, Inc. 2009. Produced by Robert Kenner. Published by Magnolia Home Entertainment, Los Angeles, CA. 93 minutes. Videodisc.
Globalisation Tapes, The. 2002. (69 min.) Independent Plantation Workers’ Union of Sumatra (Indonesia), the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF) and Vision Machine Film Project (http://situ.org.uk/visionmachine/ ). Available at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-globalization-tapes/ .
Heat: A Global Investigation. 2008. Public Broadcasting System. 120 minutes. Available through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group (http://cambridge.films.com/ItemDetails.aspx?TitleId=16892).
Home. Directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Produced by Elzévir Films and Europa Corporation with participation by France 2. 93 minutes. Available at http://vimeo.com/34689930 .
HDR 2007/2008: Climate Change and Human Development. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report video. 6:17 minutes. Available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-2008/videos/ .
Impacts and Sustainability: Issues in Globalization. 2011. Produced by Channel 4 Learning (http://www.channel4learning.com/sites/learninginternational/detail.jsp?productId=2446&index=57 ). 25 minutes. Available through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group (http://cambridge.films.com/ItemDetails.aspx?TitleId=24033 ).
Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution with Amory Lovins. Dec. 8, 2008. University of California at Berkely Graduate Council Lectures. University of California Television. 87 minutes. Available at http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Natural-Capitalism-The-Next-Industrial-Revolution-15123.
Ocean Acidification: The Big Global Warming Story. 2007. ABC TV (Australia) Catalyst (http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/default.htm). 11 minutes. Available at http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s2029333.htm and through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group.
Power Of Community, The: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. 2006. Written and produced by Faith Morgan, Eugene "Pat" Murphy, Megan Quinn. Directed by Faith Morgan. Published by Community Service, Inc., Yellow Springs, Ohio. Videodisc.
Science Under Attack: Has the Public Lost Faith in Scientists? 2011. BBC. 52 minutes. Available through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group (http://cambridge.films.com/ItemDetails.aspx?TitleId=20152 ).
Southern Ocean Sentinel. 2010. ABC TV (Australia). Aired on the news program Catalyst on April 29, 2010. 5 minutes. Available at http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2886137.htm and through the Films on Demand database by Films Media Group .
Wasteland, The. CBS News. Aired on 60 Minutes on August 30, 2009. 13 minutes. Available (May 20, 2013) at http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5274959n. ..."
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Subject Area(s):
- Environmental Sociology
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Resource Type(s):
- Syllabus
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Class Level(s):
- College 100
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Class Size(s):
- Medium
- Abstract:
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This course will introduce you to the sociology of the environment, the study of the interrelationships of human social systems and ecosystems, with a primary focus on their social aspects. These interrelationships occur on various scales, from the local to the...