Objectives and method
This course unit aims to open the Pandora's Box of scientific-social frustrations and their implications in terms of sustainability: limits in science, scientists and knowledge, unmanageable environmental complexity, contradictory international priorities, irreductible stakeholder conflicts and the upcoming trends that put the future's viability into question. This litany of difficulties is meant to challenge students to seek effectively innovative solutions that cross science, politics & society and transcend the simplistic and biased views that have placed humanity at the unstable singularity point where it currently stands.
The curricular unit includes lectures and participatory classes, with case study discussions and oral group presentations. Typical information society tools are employed: out-of-class interaction via Whatsapp, mentimeter discussion polls, oral video-focused presentations and information research covering social networks, from youtube to twitter. Group work will be structured according to the methodology of the six thinking hats developed by Edward de Bono and will culminate in a joint World Café based on the search for answers to the previously identified "Powerful Questions".
Syllabus
- Economics, Environment, and Sustainability
- Politics For and Against Sustainability
- Environmental Worldviews, Ethics, and Sustainability
- Societal Choices, Conflicts of Interest and Economic Dilemmas
- The Risk Society, Uncertainty and Ignorance
- Emerging Risks: Forestalling through the Integration of Science and Public Governance
- Post-Normal Science and the Role of the Precautionary Principle
- Public Participation: How to Tackle the Post-truth World
