Learning outcome

After successfully completing the course, the candidate will have achieved the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence.

Knowledge

The candidate:

• Has knowledge of the field of research encompassing nature, experiences and meaning.

Skills

The candidate:

• Can analyse complex issues related to nature, experiences and meaning, and make these accessible via a research-based approach.

General competence

The candidate:

• Is able through the course, and other instruction in their Masters studies, to conduct research within nature, experiences and meaning.

Course Description

The specialisation course is related to cultural studies and social sciences, with an emphasis on phenomenological and cultural-analytical approaches to the topics of nature, experiences and meaning. The basic theme is how various practices in the natural environment establish the ground for different experiences, how these are culturally interpreted, and how they are given meaning and social function.

• The concepts of nature and natural, and experiences and meaning. The problems of delimitation, theoretical approaches and values discourses. Essentialism, nominalism, family concepts and contextualism.
• Nature and the living world. Phenomenology: the relational body and nature as the living world and as a “world of the senses”.
• Project and situation concepts. Actions’ inherent characteristics and dimensions of meaning.

• Nature as factual and facilities as socio-material. Nature as open and facilities/planning as materialized expectations and silent instructions.
• Cultural concepts. Cultural analytical approaches to various practices in nature. Subcultures as creators of meaning. Nature - culture dichotomy and complementariness.
• Nature as a discursively shaped category and as a social field. Nature’s values, groups’ opposing interests and habitus, and the modern management regime’s types of understanding and instruments.
• Socialization as a learned action and interpretation framework. Reproduction of understanding, meaning and social differences. Change of socialization agents in late-modern society.
• Nature and nation. Nature as a basis for national, cultural and personal identity. Identity as inheritance and choice. Custom and tradition.
• Nature as a social arena and social educational tool. Can the meeting with nature cultivate social virtues?
• Nature as ideal and normative concept. The ecological movements and different practices in nature. Eco-psychology.
• Nature and gender. Perceptions of nature’s gender, and the meeting with nature that is formed by social gender.
• Encountering nature, activities and participation in the last decade. Agriculture as a seismograph for social change. Modernity, late-modernity and postmodernity.
• Nature as an attraction; experiencing nature as a commodity. Globalized economy, globalized culture, power and discourse changes.
• Nature and health. Quality of life in nature.

Teaching and Learning Methods

15 lectures of three to four hours; spring semester.
Lectures, seminars and study trips/excursions.

Assessment Methods

One-week home examination, graded mark, 60% of the final grade. Oral examination, graded mark, 40% of the final grade.
Compulsory 75% attendance.

Minor adjustments may occur during the academic year, subject to the decision of the Dean