To facilitate this, if you have not already done so, please upload your Field Trip Report in “doc sharing” (in the top frame tool menu) under the category, “Field Trip Reports: Peer Exchange.” Note: Once you click on this category, click on “Upload Document”: you will be offered the choice of sharing the file with the “Instructor Only” or the “Entire Class.” PLEASE BE SURE TO SELECT ENTIRE CLASS. [You should have already uploaded your report to doc sharing and well as submitting it to the dropbox by the due date deadline for the Field Trip Report.] Choose one of your peers’ Environmental Field Trip Reports to use as a basis for situating your discussion of political ecology in the real world. You will not be evaluating the report as such; it will simply provide the “case” for examination from the perspectives of the authors of the articles you choose for assessment and analysis.
Everyone should choose a different Field Trip Report written by another student in the class; this should work out if everyone participating in this DB also submitted a Field Trip Report. In addition to indicating which question you are answering, also provide the name of the author (your peer) of the Field Trip Report you selected. For this week’s DB, you should choose your question and the peer report you want to use early in the week and post that information right away; you can come back later in the week to post your full response. This will be a way of “claiming dibs” on a particular report; if it should happen that more than one person selects the same report for analysis, that’s OK. Let’s just try to get a good sampling. One goal of this assignment is for the class to share their field trip experiences. Please remember to include the question you are addressing at the beginning of your post as well as the name of the person (your classmate) whose report you are using. Feel free to reformulate any of the questions as long as you maintain the same content and focus. Your post should include references to at least TWO of the Recommended Readings from Unit 4.
1) Which among the political, economic, and ecological positions of free market environmentalism, traditionalist conservative environmentalism, natural capitalism, liberal environmentalism, deliberative ecological democracy, socialist ecology, social ecology, ecofeminism, bioregionalism, and radical ecology is the best one for a country like the United States to embrace in today’s world?
2) What is meant by the term ecofascism? How might it be connected to the concerns and goals of deep ecology?
3) Is it possible for free-market capitalist economies like the U.S. to fully promote widespread environmentalist policies? Why or why not?
4) What is the significance of the relationship between nature and society as seen by social ecologists such as Murray Bookchin?
5) How do the ecological stances of socialist philosophies compare to the views political “Green Parties”?
6) What does David Watson both fear and predict as inevitable in his image of the “Megamachine”?
Please submit your DB post by the deadline noted in the Due Date Calendar in Course Home. Peer comments are encouraged but not required; there will be another chance to engage in peer interaction in the Q&A Forum. The point here is that peer comments that say something like, “Great post; I agree with much of what you said,” are not very useful; however, if you have a substantive or critical comment (which can be either positive or negative), then by all means, please make it. Your discussion post in response to one of the questions below should be somewhere between 300 and 500 words. This is not an “iron clad” number, but rather a recommended range for helping you to formulate the depth and breadth of your response. Quoted passages will not be included in the word count of your response.
In these essay-style responses, you should express a point of view and support your view with good reasons, evidence, examples, expert opinion, etc. High marks will not be achieved by simply reporting back information from the text or other sources. Philosophical thinking and writing involves more than presenting information; beyond doing this, you must also critically assess the issue in question—this involves original thinking and analysis. Moreover, you should attempt to come to some final position in response to the question and include evaluation of others’ positions or views on the issues. Work for originality and development of critical analyses and evaluations. Also, please make sure to proofread your work for correct grammar and logical phrasing.
In responding to the questions for each discussion board, you are encouraged cite specific examples from the Recommended and/or Supplemental Readings in the course (or other relevant sources) to illustrate and support your points. However, the quoted passages should not be doing the “heavy lifting” or making your points for you. What you have to say in response to the question should be expressed in your own words. Bringing in a quote or paraphrasing another author’s argument should only be used to back up what you have said in the first place. And remember, if you copy or paraphrase words or ideas from another author or source, make sure that you follow appropriate procedures for crediting those sources with quotation marks and citations.
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