Part A) Identify and critically reflect upon your discipline (600 words)
In this section you will identify and critically reflect on the features of your disciplinary knowledge, and the assumptions, research skills and practices associated with your discipline. You will find it useful to draw on readings, lecture materials, workshop experiences and your own research. You might use some of the following questions to prompt your reflection in this section:
What is the subject matter of your discipline?
What approach(es) does your discipline adopt to research?
What kind of theoretical frameworks, paradigms, or specific practices tend to prevail in your discipline?
Are there specific methodologies and data that your discipline prefers to employ in conducting research?
Have there been any major recent changes/developments in the way the discipline has unfolded?
Are you aware of any debates and/or divisions existing within your discipline and/or criticism towards your discipline?
Throughout your assignment, it will be helpful to support your discussion with specific details (e.g. explain a theory, say how a particular practice is used, or provide an example of a specific development or debate).
Please note, when we refer to “your discipline” we mean the discipline of your FIRST major in FASS. You must use a FASS major that you are studying to complete this assignment.
Part B) Apply your disciplinary knowledge to the case study (400 words)
Case Study :Making Sense of Rising Seas: Predicting, planning for, and living with sea-level rise
Description:
As glaciers and ice sheets melt and ocean waters thermally expand, the surfaces of planet Earth’s seas are getting higher. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, global mean sea-level will rise between about 43 and 84 centimetres by the end of the twenty-first century. Right now, societies around the globe are actively grappling with the impacts of rising seas for health, livelihoods, cultures, and homes. This case study asks how sea-level rise is driving coast- and island-dwelling communities to advocate for, reimagine, and/or retreat from the places they live. It confronts how sea-level rise reveals and exacerbates inequalities among threatened places and peoples. It recognises how rising seas galvanise radical thought, speech, and action on behalf of environmental justice. And it considers why we all should–and how we all can–reckon with rising seas, whether or not we live in places under imminent threat of inundation. More than a dystopian vision of flooded futures, this case study is an opportunity to develop useful ways of understanding, imagining, and feeling for our shared watery world.
link: https://www-science-org.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/doi/10.1126/science.370.6519.901
Consider how your disciplinary perspectives, as discussed in the first part, can help you contribute to addressing one of the driving questions set for this case study (you should identify the specific question you are discussing). You might consider questions like:
What theory or methodology from your discipline could be helpful to address the question and why?
Or, what type of data would you employ to address the problem and why would it be helpful?
What kinds of proposals could your discipline provide to address the problem?
