Læringsutbytte

Knowledge

The student shall acquire knowledge about:

• The role of nature in Norwegian society
• Interactions between tourism, the use of natural resources and globalization
• Contemporary challenges to and opportunities for sustainable development

Skills

Students:

• can use basic social scientific terminology, modes of explanation and theories in their professional work
• can reflect on the understanding and uses of nature in society both past and present and show possible inroads to deal with related future issues
• can use and evaluate different tools that can be employed to teach students to take a social scientific perspective on nature

General competences

Students:

• can keep themselves up to date on the subject matter and reflect one’s own common practice
• can critically reflect on related social scientific questions

Innhold

In this course, we will look at the role of nature and the role of specific places in Norwegian society. From the mountains of Telemark to Oslo’s new opera building, nature and place play an important role both in everyday life and in large scale politics. How does the search for ‘real’ nature, the will to explore show itself in Norwegian society?

People like Fridtjof Nansen and Thor Heyerdahl left long-lasting footsteps and we will see who tries to follow them and why. To achieve this, we will get involved with the local environment and make excursions into the mountains but also visit places like the de-industrialized town Rjukan at the foot of Gaustatoppen and inquire about the youth life of Notodden. We will study how landscape changes from something threatening to a place that calls for exploration, adventure or just off-the-shelf tourism – while also paying attention to the ways in which Norway deals with its resources, from water power to oil wells in the North Sea, and from the herding practices of native people to the globalized actions of architectural designers like Snøhetta. We will focus on how to use the specific qualities of local surroundings in teaching: what kind of connections do they offer to a world in which mobile phones and the internet seem to make actual places completely irrelevant?

Arbeids- og læringsformer

We will use a variety of activities to achieve the study goals of this course, among them excursions and discussions with experts, use of sources and in-class discussions.

Designated parts of the program are mandatory, as will be stated in the syllabus.

Vurderingsformer

We will combine two exam forms: an excursion report, and an oral exam.

Det tas forbehold om mindre justeringer i planen.