Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

The 21st century presents humanity with multiple, large-scale, interconnected, synchronous crises that are causing the modern system to collapse. This perfect storm of factors consists of: climate change, energy transition, demographic transition (growth followed by slowing, aging, and urbanization), pandemics, food and water insecurity, ecological degradation, economic stress, and political instability, and escalating geopolitical conflict. This course invites student to understand the 21st century from the perspective of complexity thinking, which applies ideas from the field of complex adaptive systems analysis to the world humanity is embedded. Among the concepts explored is the notion of the liminal state, which is a period of transition from one state to another. In this case the transition involves humanity’s collapse driven departure from modern civilization to a new, not yet knowable civilization. The liminal state penetrates the basic structures of human agency resulting in a destabilization, disruption, and confusion within epistemology, ontology, and phenomenology. The course provides students the opportunity to explore the meanings of the liminal state that constitutes the world you live in.

Student Outcomes

By successful completion of the course, students will be able to: 1) Identify the various ways different traditions and theorists understand the modern world system 2) Evaluate the liminal state of the world system 3) Describe and analyze the materials on the contemporary transition of the modern world system.

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