Environment and Society

1) Theoretical and generical presentation of the subject matters;

2) Exploration of case studies by the students, closely supported by the teacher;

3) A working assignment to be made by the students;

This curricular unit aims to enable its students to acquire those fundamental notions that facilitate an historical intrepretation of both rural landscapes and the societies that live there, namely:

1. General aspects of those climatic, geological, hidrologic and biogeographical factors that explain the current distribution of agricultural and silvicultural systems;

2. The history of those scientific and technological innovations that sucessively altered rural landscapes and societies;

3. The environmental impacts of human activities from late Ice Age to our time;

4. The way anciente family organizations, societal structures and political systems shaped and continue to shape rural landscapes;

1. Mesologic and ecologic zoning of agricultural crops and plantation forests;

2. Historical evolution of agriculture and rural landscape since calcolithic times to today;

3. Historical evolution of environmental variables (biodiversity, polution, demography) during the Holocene;

4. Socio-economical structures of pre-industrial world and its implications on currend patterns of rural property;

5. Rural regions and rural societies in the Anthropocene.

6. Influence of anthropological and ethnological factors on the structuring of rural space and their persistence in the landscape and contemporary society;