Objectives of Programme's Learning Outcomes

• Understand, thoroughly and critically, the basic theoretical frameworks on social transitions and innovations.
• Understand and appropriately apply highly specialised knowledge of human and social sciences.
• Analyse social, political and economic change.
• Analyse social experiment processes.
• Analyse a situation by critically selecting the appropriate theoretical frameworks.
• Understand the epistemological postures and the methodological tools human sciences related to issues of social transitions and innovations.
• Understand the epistemological frameworks in human and social sciences in order to change thought patterns.
• Understand the methodological frameworks in human and social sciences in order to change practices.
• Mobilise the relevant analytical approaches and the appropriate methodological tools to analyse, rigorously, thoroughly and comparatively, the problems of social transitions and innovations, including their interactions and their spatial and temporal evolutions.
• Appropriately apply analytical approaches and methodological tools in contexts of social transitions and innovations.
• Develop an interdisciplinary and multiscale approach that integrates complementary disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, political science, psychology and education, urban planning and architecture, geography, and history, in order to analyse transitions and put them into context.
• In an interdisciplinary framework, analyse social transitions by applying acquired knowledge of social sciences and put them into context.
• In an interdisciplinary framework, analyse social transitions by applying acquired knowledge of political sciences and put them into context.
• In an interdisciplinary framework, analyse social transitions by applying acquired knowledge of human sciences and put them into context.

Learning Outcomes of UE

This UE deals with the ecological transformations that human societies are increasingly facing, in whatever place in the world. We focus here on perceptions (and, consequently, social representations) that social groups have concerning environmental changes occuring right in front of them. We also focus on answers (see, strategies) put in place in order to mitigate or adapt to such new situations. Social representations involve cognitive processes, brake on change, ways of being within one's own environment. They also relate to  cultural constructions which, in their majority, witness  a basic conception of relationship between man ans his environment that is strickingly different from that prevailing in Western countries (Cf. " Anthropology of Nature ", a class given in BSHS).  
Answers brought by people to changes have to do with the rate of resilience each social group demonstrates and which is more or less effective according to context. But answers are limited by the fact that the strict man-environment frame is severely overflowed : we are indeed quickly   plunged into (genuinely human) issues dealing with power relationships (between State and citizen, experts and laymen, industrials and residents...), profit, inequalities, ... which make far more complex the study of ecological transformations, and draws us back srongly to subjects such as sociology and polical sciences. 

UE Content: description and pedagogical relevance

Relying upon case studies, analysis of ecological transformations observed in various continents, in various environments (forests, deserts, moutains, oceans) and contexts (urban/rural/industrial, natural reserves) concerning i) indigenous discourses and representations; ii) responses and strategies implemented as a way to remedy such changes (agenda of politics, profit of the industry, local brakes to change, ...).

Prior Experience

Not applicable