World Sustainability Syllabus, Spring 2009 | ENST20902 & ENST20903

Introduction: The Challenge of World Sustainability

World Sustainability provides an analysis of the contemporary global crisis within a framework for restoration and transition to a sustainable world. World Sustainability will challenge us and our children for decades to come. The course examines three interacting destructive tendencies of the modern period, all exacerbated by exponential population growth:

1. The ecological crisis: The potentially catastrophic degradation and contamination of our planetary home;
2. The social crisis:The polarization between globalized rich and localized poor; the exclusion of most of the world's inhabitants; the eclipse of community; and increasing violence and misery;
3. The economic crisis: The systemic imperative of economic globalization to ceaselessly grow despite overshooting the limits to endure exponential demands on resources and on vulnerable and vital ecosystems.

The axial concept of the course is sustainability, an alternative societal path poised to replace economic growth as the fundamental organizing principle. To see the need for switching paths, we require the critical abilities to see past dominant sources of information that actively distort the facts and obstruct sustainability. Sustainability means learning to live within our means rather than depriving future generations. Our future depends on grasping the need for a transition toward a sustainable society and forging this new direction. To do so, we require both the knowledge and the wisdom to live sustainably in the future. Establishing this "global ecological literacy" is the primary function of this course. Ramapo's Professor Trent Schroyer says it well:

When we talk about 'world sustainability' we are concerned not only with getting our metabolism with nature right and creating an equitable world but also with maintaining an ethos of evidence and truthfulness, of public accountability and transparency in which legitimate democratic discourse and political action can change the rules and establish human rights.

World Sustainability examines the ecological, social, and economic crises of our time, relates these to the emerging critique of the dominant strategy for economic globalization (called the Washington Consensus in other parts of the planet) that grew out of the 1980s, and then contrasts it to the counter-views and interests of the excluded "Others" -- poor, Third World, and traditional peoples.

Learning Goals

The learning goals of World Sustainability are:

1. A thorough understanding of the concept of sustainability: The student will explain sustainability in the global context and provide examples.
2. An empirical grasp of the nature and extent of the current global crisis: The student will define timely and comprehensive aspects that indicate the extent of the unsustainability of our current civilization and anthropogenic systems.
3. A critical interpretation of how modern civilization resists, even obstructs, sustainability: Students will explain how modern civilization creates barriers that resist sustainability.
4. An appreciation of how people and organizations take actions toward sustainability: Students in Part II, the enabling analysis, will discover how citizens and organizations make decisions and gain skills helpful in making their lives sustainable, promoting sustainable communities, and achieving a sustainable world. In particular, we will explore the potential of citizenship and civil society responses.

Each of the goals will be built into the course schedule as modules. Thus, Learning Goals, Learning Modules, the schedule, and grading instruments tightly integrate.

To achieve these goals, the following skills must be attained or refined:

to read and analyze complex writings to find and evaluate information from multiple sources to integrate information coming from multiple and diverse sources to think critically

to understand the meta-levels of communication to work effectively in groups to understand the process of democratic action to present information effectively.

Part I: From Economic Globalization To World Sustainability

ENST209 contains two major sections, each of which ends in a brief paper that demonstrates the student's learning in that part of the course.

Part I.B.: The Global Ecological, Economic, and Social Crisis

We must explain the nature and extent of the current global crisis. We will examine timely and comprehensive data that indicate the extent of the unsustainability of our current civilization. The student will be asked to apprehend a world in constant whirl, changing rapidly while becoming more integrated. The problems of unsustainability will be divided into these categories:

1. The ecological crisis of resource depletion, exhausted waste disposal sinks, overshoot of carrying capacity, and climate change.
2. The social crisis of unmet human needs, growing inequality, the plight of women and children, desperately poor regions, failed states, the AIDS pandemic, wasted potential, and exclusion.
3. The economic crisis of ideological hegemony of the Washington Consensus and accelerating corporate domination of the international order.

Part I.C.: The Disabling Circumstances

The third section of the first part of the course reconstructs some of the major planetary transformations that have created these contemporary crises. We examine the dynamics through which this process occurs, explaining how people worldwide are dis-abled and disempowered as a result.

How does disabling block people from achieving psychological and moral-ethical consciousness, even forcing regression toward progressively less mature forms of behavior? How does domination distort reality via the production of disinformation and propaganda?

Part II: Creating World Sustainability

We turn to the enabling analysis: People around the world have responded to the disabling characteristics of economic globalization by engaging in grass roots activism. The second main part of the course focuses on the innovative learning that is emerging from awakening civil societies around the world. Students will research and report about citizens' groups and movements in civil society and evaluate how these social innovations contribute to the resolution of current crisis tendencies. The study of grass roots activism and movements as forces for social learning will allow for an evaluation of such social innovations, offering hope of resolving the contemporary crises and avoiding future ones. Students will present oral reports on case studies of civil society organizations that respond to the need for sustainability within a specific region and nation.

Resources, Grading, Attendance, and Assignments

The extensive on-line format allows the incorporation of Internet material, including multi-media and a dedicated World Sustainability Wiki site maintained by your professors and with your collaboration. Resource and books for the course are:

1. Michael R. Edelstein. Contaminated Communities: Coping with Residential Toxic Exposure, 2nd Edition. Boulder: Westview Press, 2003
2. Trent Schroyer and Thomas Golodik (Eds.) Creating a Sustainable World: Past Experiences, Future Struggles. New York: Apex Press, 2006
3. Lester Brown. Plan B 3.0. New York: Norton, 2008. (Note: do not use Plan B 2.0).
4. Bill McKibben. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. New York: Times Books, 2007.
5. The course uses the World Sustainability Web Site.
6. A new World Sustainability Wiki Site facilitates the interactivity required of our course.

Attendance, of course, is mandatory. Perfect attendance will be rewarded with a bonus of two points. Missing a single session will be held as neutral. After that, every missed session will lead to a deduction of four points, since each class is a double session. Missing a significant portion of the class session, such as arriving late or leaving early, may lead to a prorated deduction at the discretion of the professor. Absence for four classes can result in failure and requires that the student initiates consultation with the professor. Excused absences, counting as half an absence, may be granted for good cause, but may require documentation and should be arranged in advance whenever feasible. Holy days will be respected. The rules of academic integrity set forth in the Student Handbook will be enforced.

Each part of the course will culminate with an essay of 8 to 10 double-spaced pages defined in an on-line memorandum provided near the beginning of each section. Four points will be deducted for each week of late submission of papers.The topics for the essay and their relative weight toward the final grade are:

1. A graphic organizer and short questions that together define sustainability and provide the context for World Sustainability. This counts 10 points and is due on February 18.
2. The global crisis essay, counting 30 points, is due on March 11 -- just before spring break.
3. Each student will make an oral presentation reporting on a case study of civil society organizations that respond to the need for sustainability within a specific region and nation. The oral report of five minutes or less carries 10 points and is scheduled for April 15, 22, and 29.
4. The enabling analysis, carrying 30 points, requires that the student reports on an organization or a significant event that responds to a challenge with a program aimed as sustainability. Typically, this is a civil society organization outside the USA. Due between April 29 and May 6.
5. Participation counts 20 points and will be assessed in proportion to the contribution of the student to the class as a whole and to the interaction promoted in class by the student.

The tentative descriptions of the paper assignments are:

1. The Graphic Organizer: This is an exercise to allow you to test your understanding of the concept of sustainability and demonstrate it to us using short sentences and examples and three well developed paragraphs.
2. The Global Crisis Essay will unite the three parts of the first section, discussing the shift from Economic Globalization toward Sustainability. You will clearly define and use the concept of sustainability, explaining how the sustainability crisis we now face has emerged from the global ecological crisis, as well as interconnected social and economic crises. In doing so, you will clearly describe examples of disabling. That is, you will try to answer the nagging question of why humans have allowed their home planet to be destroyed and acquiesced to the inequities and ideology involved in our economic system. How could we do that? Disabling explains how we have entered a system that deprives us of choice and power and where our abilities become irrelevant. Experts decide for us. Draw heavily upon your course readings, lectures, movies and discussions, citing in your text and in a bibliography. The resulting paper should be around 8-10 pages.
3. The Enabling Essay will integrate the second section of the course, examining the role of Civil Society and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in balancing the power of government and business and moving the world toward sustainability. Each group will have selected a continent and each person within that group a country on that continent. Your research into CSO actions toward sustainability within that country will serve as the basis for your part in the group's presentation on grass roots sustainability movements on their continent. In this paper, you will encompass this case as an example within a thorough discussion of the concept of enabling, the role of civic action, the threefolding relationships in creating sustainability, and the outcomes. Draw heavily upon your course readings, lectures, movies and discussions, citing them in your text and in a bibliography. The resulting paper should be around 8-10 pages.

Grading Criteria: Written work is graded on these criteria:

1. Depth, creativity and critical thinking: The papers should analyze the topic so as to reveal depth of understanding and your ability to think through the essential issues pertaining to the topic.
2. Integration: The paper should weave together various sources, including reading and observations/experience, into a tight, logical outline.
3. Writing style: The paper should avoid spelling and grammatical errors and generally be well written.
4. Content and sources: Source material from books, journals, government documents, selective web sites and other appropriate sources shall be utilized to support your conclusions and demonstrate your grasp of the topic. All sources shall be properly cited in the text and provide a bibliography using either MLA or APA format.

Plagiarism policy: Members of the Ramapo college community are expected to be honest and forthright in their academic endeavors. In compliance with the college policy (see catalog) on academic integrity, suspected evidence of plagiarism shall be reported to the Provost Office and will result in failure of the course. The instructor reserves the right to use electronic aids to confirm that work is original.

Students having special needs are invited to discuss these with the instructors.

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The World Sustainability Web Site | © Michael Edelstiein, Ph.D. and Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. | Page:
Initialized: 1/10/2007 | Last Update: 3/31/2009