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Understanding Society and Natural Resources

Forging New Strands of Integration Across the Social Sciences

  • Book
  • Open Access
  • © 2014

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Overview

  • This open access book has a Preface by Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
  • Shows how social science integration might lead the way to a sustainable future
  • Embraces complexity and presents practical tools for natural resource scientists and managers to address complex social-ecological problems
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. The Status of Integration

  2. Topics in Integration

Keywords

About this book

In this edited open access book leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environmental problem solving. The chapters provide an overview of the history, vision, advances, examples and methods that could lead to integration.

The quest for integration among the social sciences is not new. Some argue that the social sciences have lagged in their advancements and contributions to society due to their inability to address integration related issues. Integration merits debate for a number of reasons. First, natural resource issues are complex and are affected by multiple proximate driving social factors. Single disciplinary studies focused at one level are unlikely to provide explanations that represent this complexity and are limited in their ability to inform policy recommendations. Complex problems are best explored across disciplines that examine social-ecological phenomenon from different scales. Second, multi-disciplinary initiatives such as those with physical and biological scientists are necessary to understand the scope of the social sciences. Too frequently there is a belief that one social scientist on a multi-disciplinary team provides adequate social science representation. Third, more complete models of human behavior will be achieved through a synthesis of diverse social science perspectives.

Reviews

"This volume is clearly an important contribution to the literature with a proper blending of different disciplines that would help us understand the interface between human society and natural resources in an integral manner." (Dr. R.K Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Dept of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA

    Michael J. Manfredo, Jerry J. Vaske, Esther A. Duke

  • Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver, Denver, USA

    Andreas Rechkemmer

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Understanding Society and Natural Resources

  • Book Subtitle: Forging New Strands of Integration Across the Social Sciences

  • Editors: Michael J. Manfredo, Jerry J. Vaske, Andreas Rechkemmer, Esther A. Duke

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8959-2

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2014

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-017-8958-5Published: 01 July 2014

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-94-017-8967-7Published: 07 August 2014

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-8959-2Published: 11 June 2014

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXV, 261

  • Number of Illustrations: 36 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Social Sciences, general, Geoecology/Natural Processes, Human Geography

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