Ecology and the social sciences

Abstract

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.

Enabling Effective Problem-oriented Research for Sustainable Development

“…Given good collaboration, interdisciplinary research offers the best prospect of producing answers to sustainability problems that are perceived as salient (as outlined later in Strategies for Coping: Interdisciplinarity, Partnerships, and Problem Orientation: Problem orientation) and enjoy broad legitimacy. However, the difficulties of such collaboration should not be underestimated (COSEPUP 2005), especially between the natural and social sciences (Pohl 2005, Lowe et al 2009, Strang 2009). Building an effective interdisciplinary team requires clearly defined common goals, excellent communication, and time to develop shared understanding of the different perspectives and their potential for the common purpose (Giri 2002, Loibl 2006, Evely et al 2008, Thompson 2009).…”

Why social scientists should engage with natural scientists

“…The research teams themselves decided and developed the interdisciplinary approaches and methods that they would employ. The following section draws on a questionnaire survey of 95 Relu-funded ecologists (the single largest disciplinary group) and comments by other Relu researchers on their experiences of interdisciplinarity (for a full description of the survey methodology, see Lowe, Whitman, & Phillipson, 2009). …”

The importance of scale in the development of ecosystem service indicators?

“…Increasingly stakeholder engagement is recognised as an important facet of studies investigating and attempting to address socio-ecological issues (Krueger et al 2012), reflecting the role of stakeholders in environmental management at multiple scales. In the development of ES measures, understanding human interactions with the environment and the roles of stakeholders therein are intrinsically connected to 'place' (Berkes 2004;Lowe et al 2009;Fish et al 2010;Waterton et al 2015). For example, the provision and enjoyment of clean water in a catchment needs to take into account those impacting on and using the water, rather than assessing land and water quality in that catchment independently of human interactions.…”