A Climate Change Module for Introduction to Sociology Courses

• In Event: 3423 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable
  In Informal Discussion Roundtable: Table 7: Teaching the Sociology of Environment and Health

Abstract

From its beginnings in the 19th Century, Sociology has been centrally concerned with the most important problems of modernity. Today, climate change looms as the greatest of such problems.

Students now starting college will live the rest of their lives in the shadow of this, the most profound, threat to global human society. Showing students how Sociological analysis can deepen understanding of climate change demonstrates to them the relevance and the power of sociological thought, and helps them better understand one of the defining issues of our time.

Each year 800,000 or more undergraduates take an “Introduction to Sociology” course, a far larger number than the number of Sociology BAs each year -- in recent years that number has been somewhere between 32,000 and 37,000. (http://www.asanet.org/research-and-publications/research-sociology/trends/bachelors-degrees-awarded-sociology, and https://datausa.io/profile/cip/451101/)

Introduction to Sociology courses are, then, one of the most promising academic sites where American undergraduates could begin to learn about climate change, its causes, its likely societal and ecological impacts, how the public and how political systems have dealt (or have failed to deal) with the threat. My analysis of today's bestselling Introduction to Sociology textbooks finds, however, that -- as the title of the analysis says -- “Climate Change is Largely Missing from Best Selling Intro to Sociology Textbooks,” (https://szasz.sites.ucsc.edu/climate-change-is-largely-missing-from-best-selling-intro-to-sociology-textbooks-104amng/)

In this presentation I display and explain a teaching module that I created for professors and instructors who may wish to add climate change content to their Intro to Sociology courses. The teaching module is on line at: https://szasz.sites.ucsc.edu/

Author

• Andrew Szasz, Univ of California-Santa Cruz