I have been recently contemplating whether or not I want to pursue ENVS as my major, something that I am sure many of my other classmates in ENVS 160 have been doing as well. It is not that I am not interested in ENVS as a major but rather I feel constrained by the all the credits I have to fulfill in order to major in it. I am extremely interested in ENVS but it would also be extremely ideal if I were able to academically pursue more of my interests such as: Ethnic Studies, Political Science and Anthropology.But we do not live in an ideal world as a result I have been thinking about how I can further explore these topics while still pursuing ENVS as a major.
ENVS has been previously described as the “Everything Studies and Sciences,” as Jim Proctor also refers to it in his “Replacing nature in environmental studies and science” article. And with every class I begin to realize just how it repeatedly intersects with social, cultural and political topics. This intersectionality is due to the fact that the environment in its very nature is something that includes of all these entities,although you can separate actors depending on whether they belong to biospherical or biocultural aspect of our environment.
Regardless, as Peace, Trigger and Connor state in “Environmentalism, Culture, Ethnography,” analyzing the interactions between various actors, such as: families, farmers, mothers, miners and fishermen, allows anthropologists to highlight how everyday interactions and cultural practices shape how individuals view and approach environmental issues. Peace, Trigger and Connor also discuss how environmental issues, specifically climate change, can act as a “threat magnifier” that exacerbates existing social,economic,political and environmental issues. Overall Peace, Trigger and Connor challenge ethnocentric assumptions about various binary categories such as: nature/culture, human/non-human and native/alien.
The more I realize that these intersectionalities exist between Environmental Studies, culture, society and politics, the less constrained I feel by the major. Overall pursuing ENVS as a major would still allow me to explore my other academic interests.