SOA-3006 Indigenous Culture, Resource Management and Human Rights - 10 stp

The course is part of the International Master of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies (MIS).

It is also optional within the Master in Social Anthropology .

The course may also be part of other disciplinary Master programmes within Social Sciences and Humanities and may be taken as a single course.

The course provides an overview of traditional resource management practices among indigenous peoples, with particular focus on small-scale economies including hunting and gathering, fishing, shifting cultivation, and pastoralism. We explore the connection between these land- (and sea-) based subsistence strategies and other aspects of culture and identity, including social and political structures, traditional knowledge systems, education, language, and cosmology.

Today, these lifeways and cultures are under threat from a number of sources including: intensive resource extraction (mining, logging, oil), large-scale development projects (dams, transportation), environmental issues (pollution, climate change, conservation efforts), and resource competition from neighboring groups. In this course we will identify global processes affecting indigenous lands and livelihood, including political-economic trends and the indigenous rights movement. We will look at how these processes take shape locally, through study of relevant UN mechanisms, regional courts and commissions, and specific local case studies.

Admission requires a bachelor's degree (180 ECTS), or an equivalent qualification, with a minimum of 80 ECTS within social sciences, humanities, education or the social practice of law. Applicants with a Norwegian study background need an average minimum grade of C or better from the bachelor's degree to be admitted to the master's program. Applicants who hold a bachelor's degree or equivalent issued in Europe, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand need an average grade of C or better on the ECTS scale. Applicants who hold a bachelor's degree or equivalent issued in countries other than the above mentioned must have an average grade of B or better on the ECTS scale.

May be taken as a single course. Application code 9371.

Students who successfully complete this course should have achieved the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

• to explain the main economic and ecological characteristics of different types of indigenous resource management systems
• to be aware of the ethnographic literature of several indigenous societies across the world
• to describe the unique way that indigenous identities are invigorated by resource use paradigms

Analytical understanding

• to be able to describe the substantive differences and similarities between traditional ecological knowledge and scientific, positivist knowledge
• to be able compare vocabularies relating to human rights and property rights to concepts used within traditional management institutions
• to be able to compare the institutional resource management practices of different indigenous societies across the world

Skills and competences

• to be able to assess the impacts that global management models and external encroachment are having upon indigenous peoples
• to be able to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of different institutions protecting land and water-use rights, offering co-management, or protecting nature
• to be able to assist indigenous peoples to best present evidence to protect their political and legal rights.