Principles for Transition:

 

Food, Fuel and Finance in a Biophysically Constrained,

 

Ethically Challenged World

 

NRE 565,  Fall 2013, Tuesdays, Thursdays, 1:00-2:30 pm

 

Room 2024, Dana Building

 

Instructor: Thomas Princen

 

Module 1 (i.e., Section 001, 1.5 credit hours): September 3 – October 24

 

Module 2 (i.e., Section 002, 1.5 credit hours): October 29 – December 10

 

 

 

Goals Principles for Transition examines contemporary shifts, biophysical and social, especially those that are discontinuous and irreversible, with an eye to the future. A primary purpose is to understand and prescribe measures for positive transition—that is, for effecting peaceful, democratic, just and sustainable changes in how societies North and South organize themselves.

 

 

 

Two overarching goals are to develop i. a grounded sense of urgency and possibility; ii. tools—historical, conceptual, practical—for positive transition.

 

Substantive topics include the  contemporary food movement, the phase-out of fossil fuels, market redefinition, distancing, ethics of resource use and transition, sustainability, consumption, localization, entrepreneurship (business, behavioral, moral), reconnection.

 

 

 

Readings

 

Module 1:

 

1.  Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World, Swilling and Annecke, UN University Press, 2012.

 

  2.  Coursepack, Dollar Bill Copying, 611 Church Street.

 

Module 2: The Future is Not What It Used To Be: Climate Change and Energy Scarcity, Friedrichs, MIT Press, 2013.

 

 

 

The cases in these readings are intended to 1) show “the possible,” i.e., that grounded in lived practice, across cultures, across time; and 2) be a source of principles for a peaceful, democratic, just and sustainable transition. The conceptual works in these readings are intended to create a “language of urgent transition,” that is, ways of thinking about fundamental change, from the local to the global, from individual to collective, from North to South.

 

 

 

Modules: Students may register for Module 1 or Modules 1 & 2 (but not Module 2 only). They may also wait until later in the first module (date to be given) to sign up for Module 2.