I think "convoluted code" is a relative Dear Stephen, Wayne, et al.,
I think "convoluted code" is a relative term, wouldn't you agree? We all have our disciplinary bias (mine still is history from undergrad) as we struggle to communicate environmental research across all kinds of boundaries, not only disciplinary boundaries but also boundaries of scale, language, culture, and so on. Social scientists are indeed engaged, also at different scales and through different theoretical prisms. As you think on engaging the social sciences in marine ecosystem research/climate change, I urge you to first consider how the social sciences fit the scale of the ecosystem of concern and how society interacts with it. For instance, with respect to, say, overfishing, an anthropologist would offer different insights/recommendations--likely tailored to a specific group's values/practices--than would an economist, who might focus on market processes. (Social scientists here, I hope you'll forgive me for painting you/us with such a broad brush.) In my own Master's research, I focused on community-level marine resource governance (human community, that is), and much of my fieldwork might be considered a mix of anthropological and sociological methods concerning a relatively small area/ecosystem. Yet there are a number of larger economic/social/environmental/historical forces and processes which shape how people at my research site view, consume, trade, and otherwise manage aquatic life. I therefore feel I can offer a narrative about how institutions develop, which I hope will add to the greater literature on environmental governance at the local as well as regional/national/global scale. As I struggle to try and publish a manuscript from my thesis, I am faced with the challenge of finding the right audience and how to address them. Just as transdisciplinary cooperation is critical to successful conservation, so is communication of research needs across the disciplines. I offered my own story b/c I think it could be instructive to ground this debate in the practical question, "How can social science address X ISSUE, for X ECOSYSTEM/SPECIES/POPULATION/COMMUNITY, at X SCALE, for X TIMELINE?" If you have this question well articulated, you're better prepared to seek out the researchers who can help you. You might also consider power relations: who has the most agency and capacity for making conservation work? B/c after all, for better or for worse, this matters. A lot. Are you certain that sociology considers nature so stable? You won't find this in political ecology. Acheson et al's work on chaotic fisheries comes immediately to mind. Geographers such as Matthew Turner and Lisa Naughton (my advisors) work across the disciplines in their own research. It is no easy task but it is worthy. I would offer that Geography might just be the ideal discipline for confronting your questions, Stephen. Steph Jones Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt ________________________________ From: Wayne Tyson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, May 25, 2011 3:51:29 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Engaging Social Scientists in Marine Ecosystem Research? Stephen, They COULD help, but WILL they? I doubt it. I'd like to be proved wrong. Those "disciplines" tend to write in convoluted code too, so look for those who can truly integrate disciplines. Read their work, have some others, representative of "the general public" or whatever audience you want targeted, read it and see who can and can't, will and won't, finish, and become excited about it. Or write it yourself--say a paper of about a thousand words, more like five or six hundred. Read "op-ed" essays; write like the best of them. Be prepared to give those folks a lot of technical, possibly even financial, help (op-ed writing is insanely low-paid). Or try someone like Tom Schroder ("Fire on the Horizon"). It will be a long, lonesome road, so be prepared to endure and stick to it. WT ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Hale" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 6:42 AM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Engaging Social Scientists in Marine Ecosystem Research? Operating from sampling platforms ranging from hip boots to oceanographic research ships, natural scientists have come up with a decent understanding of how oceans work, what is in them, how important they are to all life on Earth, and how they are threatened. But simply knowing these facts hasn’t been enough to sustain healthy marine ecosystems. To mention just one thing, human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are changing fundamental properties of the oceans such as temperature and pH. Now people talk about ecosystem-based management, a holistic viewpoint that recognizes humans as an integral part of ocean ecosystems. While humans are the cause of many problems in the ocean, they also can and must be the solution. People can be bombarded with facts, but if these facts do not fit the people’s frame of reference, they bounce off. Natural scientists are out of their realm in understanding why people behave the way they do and what motivates them to change their behavior. Time to send social scientists to sea. Humans are everywhere on the oceans—fishing, shipping, swimming, drilling, boating, mining, sailing, rip-rapping, surfing, dredging, digging clams, harnessing wind, growing seafood, watching nature, fighting wars, and building beautiful structures like the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco or the opera house on Sydney Harbor. Even humans that have never seen the ocean use rivers to send their excess nutrients and contaminants there for processing. And they use the atmosphere to carry away their carbon dioxide, much of which winds up in the oceans. Global warming is a good case in point. The most likely scenarios for global climate change will result in massive changes to global societal structures, as well as the nature and relations of states to society and to each other. Natural scientists have determined that humans are largely responsible for the sharpness of global warming seen in recent decades, but society has not yet taken effective action. As seen at Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010, while we may understand the natural sciences well enough to take action, we haven't succeeded in understanding the people side. Sociologists, cultural anthropologists, psychologists, economists, behavioral economists, political scientists, and communication scientists could help. Social scientists have studied fishing communities and coastal zone management and other nearshore issues. However, according to a 2008 National Science Foundation workshop “Sociological Perspectives on Global Climate Change,” sociologists have been slow to take up global climate change in their research. Environmental sociology lies at the fringes of the discipline, says Sociologist Constance Lever-Tracy, and it has been difficult to engage mainstream sociology, which focuses on the interactions between people, societies, and nations, and regards nature as a stable, unchanging background. Thoughts on how to better engage social scientists in research on marine ecosystems? Can anyone suggest some relevant references in the social science literature? Stephen S. Hale [email protected] ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1375 / Virus Database: 1509/3659 - Release Date: 05/25/11
