Overview
We face significant challenges including population growth, uneven development, over/under consumption, climate change, poverty, racism, and food security. Human Geography helps us to understand these challenges and imagine sustainable futures.
Climate change, environmental degradation, pollution, violence, poverty, racism and food security are all pressing global and local issues that have implications for peoples’ everyday lives. Human geography explores these issues, identifying the root causes, and posing solutions. Geographers draw on a range of concepts based on peoples’ relationships with the environment or places they live, and how being in different places and contexts shapes the problems, how they are experienced and the solutions posed. We explore how change is possible even when some of these crises seem overwhelming.
Human geography is highly relevant to contemporary issues, and in this course, we will use a variety of case studies to help you develop your geographical knowledge, and your analytical and problem solving skills. These skills are of value to a range of professions, including (but not limited to) policy makers, planners, community developers, politicians, resource and environmental management consultants, local authority officers, and researchers.
About this paper
| Paper title | Geographies of Sustainable Futures |
|---|---|
| Subject | Geography |
| EFTS | 0.15 |
| Points | 18 points |
| Teaching period | Semester 2 (On campus) |
| Domestic Tuition Fees ( NZD ) | $1,243.65 |
| International Tuition Fees | Tuition Fees for international students are elsewhere on this website. |
- Schedule C
- Arts and Music, Science
- Contact
- Teaching staff
Co-ordinator: To be confirmed.
Teaching Fellow: Ben Varkalis
- Paper Structure
Lectures cover four modules:
- People, urbanisation and the economy
- People, place and power
- People, power and territory
- People, food and sustainability
- Teaching Arrangements
Three lectures per week and a tutorial every second week.
- Textbooks
Textbooks are not required for this paper: a course reader can be purchased from the University copy shop or accessed from the Central Library.
- Graduate Attributes Emphasised
- Global perspective, Interdisciplinary perspective, Lifelong learning, Communication, Critical thinking, Cultural understanding, Environmental literacy, Teamwork.
View more information about Otago's graduate attributes. - Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this paper will:
- Have a good understanding of the content, key concepts and core sub-disciplines in contemporary Human Geography
- Be familiar with, and be able to apply, basic methods of study and techniques of analysis in Human Geography
- Be able to interact and communicate effectively as a member of a small group
- Be able to analyse critically and to communicate your analysis effectively, both orally and in writing
- Be well prepared to progress to second-year papers in Geography and to apply geographical perspectives in other subjects you may be studying
- Assessment details
Assessment is 50% internal (on-going during the semester) and 50% external (final examination)