Agricultural Geography
Today's agriculture is sprung from historical changes but is at the same time part of current societal and environmental challenges such as climate change, just transition, migration and long-term sustainable food supply.
The course requires a bachelor's degree with 90 HECs in archaeology, economic history, ethnology, business administration, geography, earth science, history, human geography, landscape architecture, environmental science, economics, urban and regional planning, social anthropology or another landscape-related subject. Alternatively accepted to master's programme in globalization, environment and social change, human geography, urban and regional planning or environmental social science. Additionally, English 6 is required.
This is the theme of the course in agrarian geography, which provides a spatial and social science theoretical perspective on the geographical conditions and changes of agriculture.
The course contributes with a critical analysis of how society and people have organized food security locally, but also how global change processes affect agriculture and how these processes have local effects and imprints in landscapes all over the world. In peoples use of land, competition often arises between different interests in the landscape, such as cultivation of bioenergy instead of food, replanting of arable land for intensified forestry, recreation on former agricultural land in the form of golf courses or horse farms. Different forms of rights to land such as usufruct and what ownership actually means are treated in the course, issues that are important for historical and contemporary changes. Another central question concerns how today's agricultural work organization and social conditions relate to immigration and increasingly automated and data-driven processes.
Climate change and welfare perspectives differ between countries and continents in food security management. The economic conditions of agriculture are both locally conditioned and globally market-influenced, older economic geographical theories of location, scale and comparative advantage are used in the course in relation to contemporary theories of globalization, political ecology and agrarian economy to understand and explain current and historical change processes. The course thus has a special focus on the geographical factors that reinforce and change forms of farming in different places and how these relate to the global and societal context they are part of.
An analytical goal of the course is to develop and deepen the course participants' knowledge of the geographical conditions of agriculture in relation to both historical understanding and the societal and environmental challenges of our time.
Teaching Format
The teaching consists of lectures, seminar treatment of current research literature and excursions.
Learning objectives
Upon completion of this course, students are expected to be able to:
- critically examine and explain historical processes and their geographical outcomes, and analyse contemporary global food security challenges in different places under different social, environmental and climatic conditions
- critically problematise, from different theoretical perspectives, what has governed agriculture at national and global level since the 19th century in different parts of the world,
- independently plan, conduct and present a study within a theme relevant to the course.
Assessment
The examination consists of an independent project and submitted seminar assignments.
The course is assessed in following parts:
Seminars, 7.5 credits
Project work, 7.5 credits
Examiner
Several teachers assess and grade within the course.
Examiner: Karen Haandrikman
Course coordinator:
Anders Wästfelt
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Contact the Student Affairs Office in the first instance if you have general questions about your studies at the department, including matters related to registration in systems such as Ladok and Athena. You can also request certified transcripts and other official certificates and talk to the International Coordinator about studying abroad as part of the Department's courses and programmes and exchange studies within the Department's agreements.
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