Ethiopia: Out of Africa

Instructor: Dr. Mehretab Assefa

Dates: May 22- June 11

Cost: $4,780 + airfare*  

Listing: SOC 248

Units: 1 SLU Unit/3.6 Credits 

Course Description: The course allows students to question the validity of time-honored notions such as individual, society, economy, and environment. Far from being clear-cut and accurate these apparently universal ideas are vague and sketchy. The course brings to light that the one-size-fits-all definitions, which inform our mind-set, are founded on assumptions serving as the mainstay of the dominant structure of knowledge. Through the context of Ethiopia, we shall see how individual, society, economy, and environment are integrated dimensions of reality; they are not segregated elements accessible only by means of abstraction.  

The ecological perspective allows students not only to critically question the obsolete simplification, certitude, and parochialism of academic disciplines, but also to be at ease in a world governed by the principles of complexity and uncertainty. In Ethiopia students will clearly see why ecological view is essential to mitigate the segregation, specialization and simplification forces. They will also realize that social inequality and environmental crisis to be global in scope and can only be restrained through ecological frame of reference.  The objective is for students to develop a holistic approach which articulates the complexity of environmental and societal interactions.

*This is an estimated cost for the program, and is subject to change.