Environment and Society

The primary goal of this course is to examine the complexity of inter-relationships between environment, society and the cognitive perceptions of place and identity as resulting from environmental and sociological conditioning. Later, more emphasis is provided through intense focus on anthropogenic resource utilization/exploitation in specific regions with associated socio-economic and environmental costs.
Students should be able to read and interpret literature, both scientific and popular, from a baseline of scientific principles.

No prerequisites are needed.

On the basis of this course, students will learn about the complexity of the relationship between the environment and society. Students will understand the issues of natural resource use and learn about the socio-economic and environmental implications that arise from this.

Students should be able to write a Technical Report based on field observations and recordings, have a solid glossary of environmental terms and usage and have competence in defining the difference between environmental fact and popular ideology.

• Hardin, G., 1968. Tragedy of the Commons. Science 13 December 1968: Vol. 162 no. 3859 pp. 1243-1248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243
• Kirn, A., 2004. Narava, družba, ekološka zavest.Ljubljana Fakulteta za družbene vede E-version
• Beck, U., 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, SAGE Publications
• Hannigan, J., 2014. Environmental Sociology, Routledge; 3 edition. Catalogue E-version

Class attendance and participation in group discussion (20 %); Field Report (40 %); Examination (40 %)

Saša Dobričič is full professor of architecture at the University of Nova Gorica and founding director of the international doctoral programme in Cultural Heritage Studies. She is also director of the Joint Second Level Master in Economics and Techniques for the Conservation in Architectural and Environmental Heritage established between University of Nova Gorica (SI) and University Iuav of Venice (I). She has been teaching and mentoring at graduate and undergraduate level for two decades promoting the interuniversity cooperation. She has been active member of UNISCAPE (European Network of Universities for the Implementation of the European Landscape Convention) since its establishment and has acted as its vice-president. She is member of the Slovenian national commission UNESCO. She has covered several advisory positions for local and national authorities in the field of sustainable urban regeneration and heritage preservation. Her research was strongly influenced by her professional experience in design and building preservation, which oriented her research interests toward adaptive reuse of built environments. Since then, her research interests and contributions are mainly related to the investigation related to sustainable urban regeneration and interpretation of different design cultures of reuse at building, urban and landscape scale.