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74789-01 - Seminar: Rethinking Planetary Well-Being from Africa (3 CP)
| Semester | spring semester 2025 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers |
Kenny R. Cupers (kenny.cupers@unibas.ch, Assessor)
Julia Tischler (julia.tischler@unibas.ch) |
| Content | This course examines African concepts and approaches to planetary health and habitability, cosmopolitan welfare, and human flourishing, emphasizing their relevance to global challenges. It serves as a platform for collaboratively conceptualizing a new MSG African Studies on the themes of planetary health, cities, and environment. Planetary health, an increasingly prominent framework, highlights the interdependence of human well-being with ecological systems. By adopting a relational and multifactorial perspective, this course expands the notion of health from a biomedical condition to include socio-ecological relations, equity, and justice on a planetary scale. The course explores how African perspectives contribute to global debates on reparations, climate justice, decolonization, and decarbonization. African Studies’ interdisciplinary breadth—encompassing history, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, architecture, political science, and theology—provides a pertinent lens to address global inequities and envision inclusive, cosmopolitan futures. Integrating transdisciplinary social science, environmental humanities, and critically engaged pedagogy with health science, the course analyzes the socio-economic drivers and consequences of planetary transformation. Students will examine how the uneven impacts of environmental degradation and climate change underscore global inequalities and necessitate interdisciplinary approaches to planetary health. The course examines Africa’s rapid urbanization and its central role in climate adaptation and decarbonization policies. By challenging dominant frameworks of development, students will explore the relationships between urban processes, planetary politics, and global asymmetries. Using African cities as case studies, the course connects these discussions to broader issues of planetary futures. Finally, the course situates African Studies as a platform for methodological innovation and critical engagement with knowledge production. Students will interrogate what constitutes legitimate knowledge and how African epistemologies can guide social sciences and humanities towards making academia, the university, and the world safer for diversity and respectful of the rights of both human and non-human systems. |
| Learning objectives | Critical understanding of notions of planetary health, well-being and cosmopolitanism from Africa perspectives Collaborative research design skills at the intersection of critical humanities, engaged social and site-based research, and environmental and medical science |
| Bibliography | Sylvia Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism Macamo, Elísio. “Before We Start: Science and Power in the Constitution of Africa.” In The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa, edited by Maano Ramutsindela, Giorgio Miescher, and Melanie Boehi, 323–34. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2016. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Introduction: Seek Ye Epistemic Freedom First.” In Epistemic Freedom in Africa. Routledge, 2018. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. Decolonising the Academy: A Case for Convivial Scholarship. Basel, Switzerland: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2020 Mbembe, Achille. “Planetary Entanglement.” In Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization, 7–41. Columbia University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7312/mbem16028-003. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category” Critical Inquiry 46, no. 1 (September 2019): 1–31. Gabrielle Hecht, “Interscalar Vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality, and Violence” Cultural Anthropology 33, 1 (2018) |
| Comments | Open to MA students from other programs with the priority for CU and CS as well as History, Anthropology, and African Studies Master students on timely registration. For Master's students and advanced Bachelor's students of history with completed basic level (proof: three proseminars, three proseminar papers). |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block | See individual dates | ||
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 03.02.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 212 |
| Tuesday 04.02.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 212 |
| Wednesday 05.02.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 212 |
| Thursday 06.02.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 212 |
| Friday 07.02.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 212 |
| Modules |
Modul: Areas: Afrika (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Modul: Aufbau Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Bachelor's degree subject: History) Modul: Epochen der europäischen Geschichte: Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Modul: Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Master's degree subject: History) Modul: Sachthemen der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul: Theory and General Anthropology (Master's degree subject: Anthropology) Module: Fields: Environment and Development (Master's degree program: African Studies) Module: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Module: Fields: Public Health and Social Life (Master's degree program: African Studies) Module: The Urban across Disciplines (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) Specialization Module Global Europe: Environment and Sustainability (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | pass/fail |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |