300652 Human-Environment Relations in East Asia  (MA: Soziologie und Anthropologie der globalen Welt) (S) (WiSe 2026/2027)

This seminar investigates ethnographic accounts of human-environment relations across East Asia alongside broader conceptual debates in anthropology. Instead of treating environments as the stage for human activity, we will explore how environments are produced, experienced, and contested through entangled relationships between people, landscapes, animals, technologies, and states, particularly under conditions of imperial expansion, industrialization, development, and globalization. Topics include environmental history, pollution, extraction, conservation, biodiversity, public health, toxicity, and environmental activism. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from China, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia, we consider how environmental problems are experienced, governed, and contested, while situating East Asia within wider discussions of the Anthropocene, political ecology, and global environmental change.