300244 SE Seminar for Masters, Diploma and PhD-students in Human Ecolgy (2008W)

Goals: Transdisciplinary thinking, understanding of interrelations between the natural environment, technology, society and the economy. Awareness of individual responsibility.
Objectives and contents: Human Ecology as the science of the interrelations between the human being and its environment as integrative approach connecting natural and social sciences as well as ethics.
Biological and cultural evolution of man and his behaviour. The question of "human scale" (in the sense of E. F. Schumacher). Urbanization, criteria of "ecological cities". Nutrition and food supply. Industrialized agriculture (e.g. "Green Revolution") vs. sustainable alternatives. Nature and technology, the necessity of control of technology by society. The concepts of appropriate technology and sustainable development. Ecology and economy. Ecology and ethics. The ethics of motives and the necessity of its replacement by an ethics of responsibility.