Thanks John. I agree on all points. Which is why I get less and less interested in academic-journal science (which is necessary) and more activist/ engaged as I get older.
More than a decade ago, I attended a climate change conference, where the high-peofile keynote speaker argued that the accumulation of data and public education (by which he meant information-giving) were the keys to change. I noted at the break that he was chain-smoking. Go figure. dwt Quoting John Glass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > hi, David > > i agree that this is a problem and one that is heavily influenced by private > and perhaps more importantly, public (and obviously political) discourse. how > to intervene on that? best method i know of to date is to influence social > norms. unfortunately, there are limited data available on how to specifically > do this (growing data sources, though) and a seeming reluctance among some > practitioners to engage in this kind of intentional social change behavior. > > the irony is that there are people who intentionally shape social norms > (business marketers) and most people are perfectly fine with that. shape > social norms to increase the likelihood of things like sustainability, > conservation, more humane behavior and one becomes a social engineer > (horrors!) or even worse, an "activist" (notice, at least here in the US, > that when corporations attempt to influence legislation, this is regarded as > the perfectly acceptable practice of "lobbying," whereas when a group of > citizens want to influence legislation * which is our given democractic right > and responsibilty * they are labelled as "activists" and regarded with > distrust). go figure. > > certainly, i am not advocating for "sabotaging the whole enterprise;" i hope > to support it and legitimize it much more than it is today (agreed that it > has fallen into "disfavor"). i suspect that education is still the favored > route. > > i do think, however, that behavior is influenced not just by education (many > people KNOW that restricting high-fat food intake is a good thing, and yet > eat said kinds of foods daily), but also by reinforcement and motivation. > people need not only information to change, they need REASONS to change; IMO, > those reasons need to be compelling and immediate * change NOW or suffer the > consequences for a very long time. short of that, people have no reason to > change. > > lastly, i think that with things scientific or however these methods are now > going to be defined (I liked someone's suggestion of "inclusive science"), > the best way to demonstrate their utility (and relevance, and value, and > legitimacy) is to have tangible outcomes resulting from their application(s). > we do this quite well with medications, yes? what do we call "unvertainties" > in medications? side-effects. do people stop taking medications because of > these "uncertainties?" heck, no. Why? because, pragmatically, they are the > best thing going (i know, i take gemfibrozil to lower my triglycerides * one > way to engage the public more might be to stop using Latin to name these > things!). > > sorry, one more "lastly"...how do you get a shaman to colalborate with a > scientist? easy...demonstrate how their collaboration is going to increase > the overall likelihood of outcomes beneficial to both of them and the people > they represent. unless both are interested in self-destruction, there has to > be some common ground, somewhere. this is what you focus on when setting an > achievable goal for an inclusive project. of course, the devil is in the > details, but that should be no reason to not collaborate, IMO. > > john > > > > John E. Glass, Ph.D. > Professor of Sociology > Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences > Colin County Community College > Preston Ridge Campus > 9700 Wade Boulevard > Frisco, TX 75035 > +1-972-377-1622 > http://iws.ccccd.edu/jglass/ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "Some bad karma is worth it" > Me > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/pipermail/intsci_learningforsustainability.net/attachments/20060303/dbd165b4/attachment.html > _______________________________________________ > IntSci mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/mailman/listinfo/intsci_learningforsustainability.net > D. Waltner-Toews, Professor Department of Population Medicine University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada www.ovcnet.uoguelph.ca/popmed/ecosys www.nesh.ca www.eccho.ca _______________________________________________ IntSci mailing list [email protected] http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/mailman/listinfo/intsci_learningforsustainability.net
