Prior to beginning work on this assignment, review all the course resources, discussions, and other assignments. In particular, review the food habits worksheet you completed for the Week 3 Assignment and the analysis of your environmental worldview as discussed in the Week 5 Discussion.
In this Final Project, you will identify your own environmental worldview (as expressed in your eating choices), comparing your behavior with your expressed values. You will then evaluate the health of your actual relationship with nature, and propose specific spiritual practices (around food or otherwise) that might help you develop a more healthy relationship with nature.
In your paper,
Identify which of the three major environmental worldviews best aligns with your eating habits that you recorded in the Week 3 Food Habits Worksheet Assignment. Make sure to include all three components of an environmental worldview: philosophy, religion, and ethics. In other words, determine whether you are closest in philosophy to materialism, idealism, or dualism; whether you are closest in religion to pantheism, monotheism, or naturalism; and whether you are closest in ethics to anthropocentrism, biocentrism, or ecocentrism. Remember that you are identifying which views best align with your actual behavior, not which worldview you believe is theoretically best, or which you wish you were closest to. Be sure to cite evidence from your actual behavior (as recorded in your completed food habits worksheet) to support your interpretation.
Evaluate the health of your actual relation to nature. Be sure to discuss how your embodied worldview (as reflected in your actual behavior) either does or does not encourage you to have a sustainable use of natural resources, paying special attention to your eating habits and whether they fit with what you learned in Week 5 about the environmental impact of various food systems. If relevant you might also wish to evaluate whether your actual behavior reflects the worldview you theoretically believe is best and whether the three components of your worldview are consistent (i.e., whether your philosophy, religion, and ethics contradict or support each other).
Create at least three different spiritual practices (around food/eating or otherwise) that you could adopt to help you develop a healthier relationship with nature. Be sure to explain as specifically as possible both what the practice would involve, and how that practice would help you develop the habits necessary to have a more ecologically sustainable and healthier relationship with nature.
The Final Project
Must be 8 to 10 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Writing Center (Links to an external site.)’s APA Style (Links to an external site.)
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of project
Student’s name
Course name and number
Instructor’s name
Date submitted
For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).
Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
Need not include any sources other than the course required and suggested resources.
Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.)
Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.
