Teaching Cases
A core element of our strategy for teaching this course has been the crafting of a small number of in-depth case studies about how people in particular times and places have grappled with the challenges of sustainable development. We use these cases to help students explore how the general ideas about concepts, relationships, and capacities that we introduce in each Unit play out in particular contexts. Using the same case repeatedly throughout the course helps students see how the ideas of successive Units interact to shape development pathways. Using multiple cases allows comparisons that build an appreciation of what about the pursuit of sustainability has general relevance and what is specific to particular contexts. Several of the cases we use are set forth in the textbook used for the course (Matson et al., 2016). Provided here are newer cases and case extensions we have written since that book was published.
The Alaskan Salmon Fishery: Managing Resources in a Globalizing World
The Alaskan salmon fishery is often held up as a model of successful, sustainable resource management — one of the few to have avoided catastrophic collapse. This case looks at the harder story beneath that reputation: how a place long seen as a land of inexhaustible resources has navigated globalization, consumption demands, and the long-term challenge of managing extraction.
Image credit: Alaska State Library, John E. Thwaites Photograph Collection, J.E. Thwaites, P18-118
The Struggle for Sustainable Development in Appalachia’s Mineral Rich Mountains
This teaching case examines the paradox of poverty amidst plenty, exploring the co-evolving history of nature and society in Central Appalachia from the Native American period to the present. It is a history of inequality and the maldistribution of power — but also a history of resistance and struggle.
Image credit: Library of Congress
London: A Multi-Century Struggle for Sustainable Development in an Urban Environment
Key episodes in the two-thousand-year history of the City of London and its immediate hinterlands — an empirical puzzle for studying how a city and the places around it change over the very long run.
Image credit: The Great Fire of London (anon., c. 1675), via Wikimedia Commons — public domain
Looking Outward: Refocusing Attention on London’s Hinterland
A short companion to the London case, about the distant places and resources London relied on as it grew.
Image credit: West India Docks (1810), The Met Collection — public domain