ENVIRONMENTAL AND URBAN SOCIOLOGY
- Overview
- Assessment methods
- Learning objectives
- Contents
- Full programme
- Delivery method
- Teaching methods
Basic knowledge of modern and contemporary history is a necessary requirement for successful participation in the teaching.
The method of verifying knowledge and skills consists of an oral exam,
including open questions based on the contents and approaches presented. Attending students will be given the possibility to integrate the oral exam with a written text (to be done according to the teacher’s instructions). In any case, the assessment takes into account the relevance of the answers given to the questions asked, the clarity of presentation and the
possession of the specific language of the discipline. Whenever possible, the attitude and contribution given by the students in class will be taken into account. A mark is given out
of a maximum of thirty.
The primary objective of the course is the acquisition of the sociological skills necessary for the exercise of critical knowledge and reflexivity on environmental issues, local development and urban studies. In particular, the teaching offers an in-depth knowledge of categories and analytical tools both of a theoretical type, in relation to the sociological study of the modernization process, and of social research with reference to epistemological principles, methodological approaches and research techniques on the main topics addressed. Furthermore, the course pursues as its basic objective the familiarization of students with the categories and the fundamental vocabulary of classical sociological theory and contemporary social research on the topics of the teaching program.
The main contents of the course concern the anthropocene and the environmental challenge, the modernization process and its spatial dimension, the symbolic systems and the ritual dimension of social life, social cohesion and exclusion, post-industrial economy, cultural consumption, events and contemporary tourism.
The course deals with five main thematic strands in its program: 1) The contemporary scenario from the point of view of the Anthropocene and the challenge of climate change; 2) Modernization, state and European cities up to the Keynesian compromise; 3) Modernity, rituals and symbolic systems; 4) The social construction of reality in everyday life; 5) Post-industrial economy, events and tourism today.
The teaching adopts three main teaching methods for each of the five areas in which the teaching's programa articulate itself: a) frontal lessons by the teacher; b) reading and re-elaboration of texts by students; c) exercises of sociological imagination in class.