Ecology and the social sciences
2009; Wiley; Volume: 46; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01621.x
ISSN1365-2664
AutoresPhilip Lowe, Geoff Whitman, Jeremy Phillipson,
Tópico(s)Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
ResumoJournal of Applied EcologyVolume 46, Issue 2 p. 297-305 Free Access Ecology and the social sciences Philip Lowe, Corresponding Author Philip Lowe *Correspondence author. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorGeoff Whitman, Geoff Whitman Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UKSearch for more papers by this authorJeremy Phillipson, Jeremy Phillipson Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UKSearch for more papers by this author Philip Lowe, Corresponding Author Philip Lowe *Correspondence author. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorGeoff Whitman, Geoff Whitman Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UKSearch for more papers by this authorJeremy Phillipson, Jeremy Phillipson Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UKSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01621.xCitations: 57AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Summary 1 The urgency and complexity of current environmental problems require ecologists to engage in cross-disciplinary research with social scientists, among others. 2 This study explores what ecologists expect from such cross-disciplinary engagements, through a review of editorial statements in key ecological journals and an empirical survey of ecologists working with social scientists. 3 Ecologists were found to have different perspectives on collaborating with social scientists depending upon whether they had an instrumental or non-instrumental outlook on the role of social sciences. 4 Ecologists are also pursuing other approaches to incorporate human dimensions into their work, including engaging end-users and stakeholders in their research; and enlarging the scope of ecology to include human subjects/objects in their research focus. 5 Synthesis and applications. Ecologists face strategic choices when incorporating human/social dimensions in their work – whether engagement with stakeholders, enlargement of ecology as a life science, or active exchange with the social sciences. The choice depends on the stance taken on the place of humans in nature. Each strategy poses specific challenges for ecologists relating respectively to: the justification of how and which stakeholders to engage; the avoidance of naïve borrowings of terms and methods from the social sciences; and the training needed for working in interdisciplinary teams. Introduction The research challenges posed by global environmental change cut across established scientific divisions and call for collaboration between natural and social sciences. Ecologists are playing a leading role in these cross-disciplinary endeavours. As Ludwig et al. (2001) remark, 'A new sense of urgency about environmental problems has changed the relationship between ecology, other disciplines and public policy', such that 'ecology now finds itself in intense interaction with a host of other disciplines' (p. 481). Ecology has always been receptive to developments in other natural sciences. The historian Stephen Bocking (1997, p. 190) goes so far as to suggest 'ecology's relationships with other disciplines have been intrinsic to its own identity'. 'From time to time', he explains, 'ecology has had to resolve certain practical or scientific problems that could not be addressed solely by the tools available within the discipline'. In doing so, ecologists have drawn selectively on methods and concepts from other disciplines to position themselves within the wider scientific enterprise in pursuit of their 'ambitions to revise their own discipline'. However, engaging with the social sciences is a major shift of strategy, which may involve ecologists not only in novel subject matter but also in unfamiliar research methods and modes of understanding. This study therefore explores why and how ecologists are turning to cross-disciplinary research with social scientists. To address those questions it is helpful to pose another one: 'How do ecologists construe people?' The following analytical framework presents three possible responses. How do ecologists construe people? Broadly conceived, ecology is the study of organisms in their environments. Quintessentially, it is taken as the field study of natural organisms under natural conditions, with natural taken to mean non-human. In this ideal sense, ecology is the antithesis of the human world and, in its broader public role, is equated with the protection of nature from human obliteration. This type of pure ecology, studying and conserving wild nature in pristine environments, has people absent from its empirical focus, although its rationale may be that they are a looming presence, as pervasive threat or benign saviour. Indeed, it strongly presumes, even sanctions, human agency (either positively or negatively). Thus, people and human society set the context in which ecological research is conducted: essentially, on their behalf, it studies the dynamics of other living things. Primarily, in effect, people are treated, as the 'ecological audience'. However, the study of natural organisms under natural conditions is not always desirable or even attainable. Human influences are now everywhere, affecting every system and flow (McKibben 1989). While many ecologists seek to study relatively undisturbed systems, they cannot wish away human influence. As Begon et al. remark 'Ecologists are not only concerned with ... organisms in nature, but also ... with ... man's influence on nature' (1990, p. xi). The rationale for much ecological research is to improve for human purposes the management of systems or organisms, including ones already extensively modified. Here human effects are treated as external factors or goals in the management of semi-natural systems. Secondly then, people are treated as 'ecological agents'. The third perspective arises from the ontological debate over whether to treat people as a part of, or apart from, nature. Ecologists as natural scientists are committed to the philosophy of naturalism – the assumption that there is but one system of reality and all life-forms, including human beings, are thus subject to the same underlying processes (Keller & Golley 2000, p. 12). Therefore, in prescribing ecologists' objects of study, the 'natural' cannot be taken to preclude humans. Most ecologists, even so, choose to study non-human organisms, but still assume that the generalizations they produce are relevant to human processes too. Others deliberately embrace human society within their object of study – what Berkes refers to as 'an emerging understanding of ecosystems as complex adaptive systems in which human societies are necessarily an integral part' (2004, p. 624). In this perspective, then, people are treated as 'ecological subjects/objects'. The expectations ecologists have of the social sciences might be expected to vary depending upon which perspective is taken. The first – treating people as the ecological audience – makes no specific claims on the social sciences: the science–society link is treated in conventional terms as the fact/value distinction. The second perspective – treating people as ecological agents – construes human effects as either exogenous, anthropogenic factors or as determinants of the goals of managed systems. With the third perspective – treating people as ecological subjects/objects – ecology crosses into the social sciences. While these three perspectives co-exist in contemporary ecology, they can also be seen partly in chronological terms. The first was much more tenable when ecology was establishing itself as a basic biological discipline and pristine environments still existed. The intervening century has seen remorseless human expansion and the retreat of nature. The political response in the 1960s and 1970s, through the environmental movement, produced policy demands that enabled the establishment of an ecological managerialism in pursuit of scientifically-based technical solutions to environmental problems. This stimulated the development of a set of ecological sub-disciplines (such as applied ecology, landscape ecology, conservation biology, restoration ecology) based on the second perspective. The environmental movement politicized ecological concerns in ways that both excited and alarmed scientific ecologists (Lowe & Worboys 1976). Political movements were formed (including political ecology, social ecology, deep ecology) heralding 'The Age of Ecology' (Worster 1977, p. xiii). A few ecologists were drawn to the third perspective. Eugene Odum, for example, whose conception of the ecosystem infused the new ecological managerialism, declared that, under the pressing need to address 'the totality of man and environment', ecology had become 'a major interdisciplinary science that links together the biological, physical and social sciences' (1975, pp. v, 4). But others feared political co-option by radical movements. Indeed, the emergence of a set of sub-disciplines orientated towards ecological managerialism can be seen not only as a scientific response to pressing environmental problems but also as an effort to depoliticize these fields and demarcate areas where scientific priorities could prevail. With recognition of global environmental change in the 1990s and 2000s, ecological managerialism has come to seem a self-limiting perspective. Complex environmental problems appear less amenable to straightforward scientific or technical fixes. Resolving human–environment dysfunctions calls for more fundamental attention to the human side of the equation. Moreover, the human dominance of the biosphere is rendering a non-human ecology ever more untenable. Increasingly, therefore, ecologists are embracing the third perspective. This is taking them beyond the sub-disciplinary strategies of the 1970s and 1980s. As they seek to take on the human dimension more fully, some of them are reaching out to the social sciences. Methodology We are interested to explore this no-man's land of cross-disciplinarity without too many preconceptions. That is why we use the neutral term cross-disciplinarity to refer to ecologists' engagements with the social sciences, without presuming (as do other terms – such as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary –Tress, Tress & Fry 2005) what form that engagement should take. We are interested in clarifying what ecologists conceive of, and expect from, cross-disciplinarity. We pursue this through two empirical lenses. The first is a review of positioning statements in ecological journals oriented towards ecological managerialism, to see if and how they prescribe engagement with the social sciences. The second is a survey of ecologists currently engaged in a cross-disciplinary research programme – the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU) – the largest ever conducted in the UK involving ecologists collaborating with social scientists. The journals surveyed were: Journal of Applied Ecology (founded in 1964), Landscape Ecology (1987), Conservation Biology (1987) and Restoration Ecology (1993). They do not cover the full range of ecological opinion, but are a cross-section of well-established, mainstream applied ecology journals. Moreover, each included an editorial prospectus in its first issue. Recently also, each carried a stock-taking editorial. We were thus able to compare and contrast their foundational and contemporary formulations of the scientific challenges they face. The objective was to review the changing framing of the human dimension of ecological managerialism by established ecological sub-disciplines and how these are translated into prescriptions for engagement with the social sciences. The journal review informed the design of a questionnaire, which was distributed to 95 ecologists in 37 RELU projects, to explore their attitudes towards cross-disciplinary working. The response rate was 53%. It is difficult to say how representative this group is of the wider ecological community, other than that it must be a fair proportion of those UK applied ecologists interested in working with social scientists. The programme does not prescribe the form of cross-disciplinarity to be undertaken – that is left to the individual project teams. The projects therefore offer a rich diversity of experience. The interest in the findings is in what they reveal of the diverse strategies and fundamental choices confronting ecologists in developing the human dimension of their work. Ecological managerialism's changing conceptualization of the human dimension journal of applied ecology Journal of Applied Ecology's founding in 1964 marks the advent of ecological managerialism, understood then as providing the scientific foundation for the 'wise utilization of natural resources' (Bunting & Wynne-Edwards 1964, p. 1). The opening editorial saw, in the rapidly rising population and the acceleration of development throughout the world, that 'Ours is an age in which ecological thinking and methods have more than ever before to contribute to the progress of mankind'. The editors of the new journal, however, were at pains to emphasize that applied ecology – or what they termed 'work in the economic field' (p. 1) – should not depart from strict scientific norms, insisting that 'the distinction between pure and applied ecology is one of convenience and not of scientific merit or status' (p. 1). Precisely because applied ecology should lead to recommendations for action, 'measurement and experiment should be characteristic features' (p. 2). Additionally, the editors urged that 'synthesis is an essential component of effective ecological research' (p. 2), but with the stricture that 'synthesis does not condone the introduction ... of subjective or sentimental considerations into ostensibly scientific reasoning' (p. 2). In 2000, Journal of Applied Ecology's editors returned to the role of applied ecology in an increasingly human-altered world, in an editorial entitled 'The age of applied ecology' (Ormerod & Watkinson 2000). They presented a bleak view of the extent of human encroachment on the natural environment which nevertheless reinforced their confidence that 'Successful ecological management will become one of the most pressing necessities of our time' (p. 2). That implied enlarged responsibilities for applied ecologists: 'Guiding subsistence, well-being and resource-use ... as much as ... the grim warnings we must continue to give' (p. 2). This expanded domain demanded 'the highest standards of rigour, scientific quality, clarity and services' (p. 2). In turn, large-scale ecological management provided the ultimate test of ecological theory. The editorial makes only passing reference to other disciplines in the rhetorical remark that the Journal of Applied Ecology must maintain its status as 'one of the world's major journals through which ecologists speak to each other, and to other related disciplines in environmental management' (p. 2). The social sciences are not explicitly mentioned. conservation biology Conservation Biology was launched in 1987 in 'response to the biological diversity crisis' and brought together interested scientists in universities and conservation organizations (Soule 1987, p. 4). The journal's opening editorial declared that 'biology is at the heart of all phases of conservation and is the ultimate arbiter of its success and failure' (Ehrenfeld 1987, p. 6). A broad applied agenda was set for conservation biology including 'development and evaluation of technological and management interventions that maintain and restore diversity and function' and their integration with 'complementary human activities, from agriculture to anthropology' (p. 5). The editorial added that 'we are not so arrogant as to think we can go it alone.... We need such academic disciplines as palaeontology, climatology, oceanography, anthropology, philosophy and ethics, and economics. And in the "real world" we rely upon nongovernmental conservation organizations' (p. 6). In 2006, in an editorial looking back on 20 years of the journal, the current editor was joined by his two predecessors (Meffe, Ehrenfeld & Noss 2006). While gratified by the scientific stature Conservation Biology had achieved, they berated that 'Our collective influence on global conditions, policies, and quality of life for humans and nonhumans has been minimal as the world marches on, largely oblivious to our science' (p. 595). To stem the loss of biodiversity would require a 'global change in worldview' and to tackle that 'fundamental problem relative to human behaviour', there was a clear imperative 'for interdisciplinarity and inclusion of the various social sciences' (p. 596). Conservation biologists were urged to 'break down intellectual and disciplinary barriers ... to address the most vexing and serious problem ever to face humanity: survival of a planet increasingly vulnerable to a massive build up of one species – ours' (p. 596). landscape ecology This journal was dedicated at its start in 1987 to 'correcting biospheric disorder' (Golley 1987, p. 3) – a condition that stemmed from ignorance of 'the interactions between human decisions in economic and social spheres and the land, water, and air upon which we depend for life' (p. 3). Landscape promised to provide a larger and comparative context for ecosystem studies to overcome the basic shortcoming of much ecological research, that: 'Our scale of focus has been too small and our attention span too short to grasp the biospheric web in which we exist' (p. 3). The larger scale entailed moving beyond 'the reassuring replicability but constrained relevance of field plot studies and laboratory experiments'. With the aim of 'truly reaching across barriers towards solutions to human problems' (p. 2), there was also the requirement to synthesize and evaluate. Besides ecologists, the journal was intended to embrace the landscape research interests of 'landscape designers, architects and planners, as well as soil scientists, geographers, modellers, biogeographers' (p. 1). A 2006 editorial identified contrasting traditions within landscape ecology: one 'dominated by a bioecology-centred spatial view that focuses on question-driven studies'; the other 'a society-centred holistic view that focuses on solution-driven research' (Wu 2006, p. 1). The difference hinged on the extent research incorporated anthropogenic influences, 'ranging from treating humans as one of the factors creating and responding to spatial heterogeneity to considering the landscape as a total human ecosystem' (p. 1). The editor suggested that these differing perspectives spanned a spectrum, ranging from interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary approaches, with 'the degree of integration among disciplines, prominence of humanistic and holistic perspectives, and direct relevance to societal issues all increasing' (p. 2). The dominant research mode also shifted 'from plot-based and question-driven studies to place-based and solution-driven investigations, with increasing subjectivity and uncertainty in system description and prediction' (p. 2). With such a unified framework, landscape ecology should be central to 'sustainability science' (p. 3) – a new kind of science focusing on 'the dynamic interactions between nature and society' (p. 2). The key contribution of landscape ecology would be understanding the biophysical and socioeconomic mechanisms of land use/cover change and their impact on ecosystem services (p. 4). restoration ecology Restoration Ecology was launched in 1993. The Ecological Society of America had recently identified restoration of damaged ecosystems as a major priority for a sustainable biosphere (Lubchenko et al. 1991). However, while this was a field of extensive technical and engineering activity, it had not previously attracted strong scientific interest. The purpose of the journal therefore was to communicate 'among researchers and practitioners, with the goal of advancing the scientific foundation of restoration' (Rieger 1993, p. 2). In 2005, a new editor took the opportunity to set new directions. Restoration ecology as a 'young and developing science' (Hobbs 2005, p. 240) 'needed to be open to alternative perspectives if it were to ... be a real force in ... the repair and better management of the Earth's ecosystems' (p. 241). 'At a time of flux when traditional or "normal" science is being seen as not sufficient on its own to tackle ... pressing environmental problems' it was important 'to explore differing approaches', to 'the standard experimental and observational scientific methodologies' (p. 241). That entailed engaging with the movement towards 'inter-, multi- and transdisciplinary studies'; and being receptive to contributions from 'philosophical, social and other more humanities-based arenas [with] the potential to contribute greatly to the conceptual and theoretical development of the discipline' (p. 241). Different modes of cross-disciplinarity This review of foundational and contemporary editorials in journals orientated towards ecological managerialism does confirm our initial hypothesis of a shift in perspective towards the human dimension and potential engagement of the social sciences. The temporal movement over the last 20 years has broadly been from the second perspective (treating people as ecological agents) towards the third perspective (people as ecological subjects/objects), but to differing degrees. A common justification of each of the contemporary editorials is a disparity between the scientific strength and societal influence of their respective fields. For sub-disciplines with an outlook of ecological managerialism, there is an acute contradiction in portraying a flourishing science alongside chronic environmental decline. However, different understandings of the source of this disparity are presented. To address the gap between science and application, recent editorials in Journal of Applied Ecology have looked either to enlarging the spatio-temporal scale of applied studies to improve their relevance, or to a better targeting of research design and scientific communication to enhance their impact. In these ways, they have looked to draw environmental management into the scientific rationality of applied ecology, with the arguments: firstly, that the ultimate test of ecological theory lies in the management of ecosystems (Ormerod et al. 1999, after Bradshaw 1996); and, secondly, that: 'Applying ecological research to real-world problems ultimately requires that we predict future management practices' (Freckleton et al. 2005, p. 1). This refounding of policy and practice on ecological principles and methods may imply no explicit reference to the social sciences. However, Lawton (2007) argues it is naïve to assume that scientific evidence delivered to the responsible organization will lead straightforwardly to policy changes, adding that in reality, 'the process of influencing policy is messy, iterative and involves many players' (p. 288). Lawton proposes that ecologists should learn from social science about public policy and decision-making. In other words, if the science is sound but the system is not responding, there may be a role for social science in communication and policy translation, to help to get the message through. Others argue that the shortcomings of ecological managerialism indicate a more fundamental failing. A contemporary editorial in Conservation Biology resoundingly declares: 'Those who still think that ... good science by itself will save the day are as much in denial as those who say there is no environmental crisis' (Meffe et al. 2006, p. 596). It is argued that: 'Biodiversity conservation is a human endeavour ... intended to modify human behaviour to achieve a socially desired objective' (Mascia et al. 2003, p. 650). Conservation Biology has most consistently pursued the 'mainstreaming of the social sciences in conservation' (Mascia et al. 2003, p. 650). The approach is essentially instrumental, insisting that 'it is the applied tools from both social science and conservation biology that are most needed for successful conservation' (Fox et al. 2006, p. 1819). The potential role of social science is facilitator of environmental management. It is perhaps not surprising that ecologists were led first to collaborate with economists – the group of social scientists with which they had most in common: including a preoccupation with the role of competition for scarce resources which gave them a common intellectual heritage; and a largely positivistic and quantitative orientation, which made them open to similar statistical techniques and the vogue for mathematical modelling (Røpke 2004). Economists are also the closest social scientists to government, with strong theories about how societies value resources. Ecologists saw working with them as a means of translating their claims into the dominant discourse of money. With a loss of consensus in the 1980s over the urgency of environmental problems, governments were not prepared to pursue environmental protection regardless of cost; instead, cost–benefit analysis, risk assessment, and other methods of establishing relative priorities came to the fore. Increasingly, economics became the key arbiter of these issues. As ecologists turned to it for analyses of human values and societal interests, some were drawn more fully into its concepts and methods, and thus to engage with social science on its own terms, that is in a non-instrumental manner (Røpke 2005). A major development was the founding of the journal Ecological Economics in 1989 to 'address the relationship between ecosystems and economic systems in the broadest sense' (Costanza 1989, p. 1). 'A new approach to both ecology and economics' was called for to overcome the partiality of the parent disciplines: the neo-classical blinkers of economics; and ecology's preoccupation with 'natural' systems. The journal therefore set out 'to make economics more cognizant of ecological impacts and dependencies; ... to make ecology more sensitive to economic forces, incentives, and constraints; and ... to treat integrated economic–ecologic systems with a common (but diverse) set of conceptual and analytical tools' (p. 1). Working first with economists therefore demonstrated to ecologists the scope and challenge of cross-disciplinary working with social scientists. While it revealed some of the limits of an economistic frame of analysis, it began also to open up non-instrumental perspectives on the social sciences, and thus laid the basis for potentially wider and deeper collaborations. From its very beginnings, Landscape Ecology too has sought to integrate a non-instrumental approach to the social sciences, albeit more orientated towards the analysis of human impacts. The journal's opening editorial recognized that 'biological changes and human interactions have been an ongoing process' (Golley 1987, p. 3) and committed itself to 'reaching across barriers towards solutions to human problems' (p. 2). Contributors to the journal fluctuate between seeing humans as a factor influencing landscapes and seeing the landscape as a total human ecosystem. From this journal review, we can identify a number of potential roles that ecologists envisage for social science collaboration. We distinguish between instrumental roles (which include 'communication and policy translation' and 'facilitation of environmental management') and non-instrumental roles (which include 'human values and societal interests' and 'understanding human behaviour and impacts') (Fig. 1). Non-instrumental roles imply engagement with the concepts and methods of social science and not just with its outputs, entailing a departure from the conventional epistemology of the natural sciences. Some of the journals acknowledge the need for such a departure. Landscape Ecology, for example, has charted the shift in epistemologies from 'falsification and hypothetico-deductive methods, rooted in the Popperian philosophy of science ... to alternative scientific methodologies that emphasise the value of confirmation and inductive reasoning' (Wu 2006, p. 2). Restoration Ecology too has opened up to 'inter-, multi- and transdisciplinary studies ... and the emergence of "postnormal" science' (Hobbs 2005, p. 241). Figure 1Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Expected benefits from research collaboration with social scientists.Note: percentages refer to ecologists' ranking benefit as most important in the survey reported below. Ecology and the social sciences in a major cross-disciplinary research programme Some of the above may well be rhetorical positioning by journal editors (Antrop 2007). It is unclear what their prescriptions imply for, or how much they reflect, research practice. To find out more about the reality of cross-disciplinarity, therefore, we conducted a survey of ecologists who are actually collaborating with social scientists within RELU. ecology and the human/social dimension Almost all respondents (94%) agr
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