Understanding Society and Natural Resources: Forging New Strands of Integration Across the Social Sciences

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.

Preface I: Rajendra Kumar Pachauri -- Preface II: Paul J. Crutzen -- Introduction -- Part I: The Status of Integration: Chapter 1: Historical Perspective on the Diversity versus Unity in the Social Sciences: Al Luloff, Philip Lowe, Jeff Bridger -- Chapter 2: Integration via Interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences and Beyond: Concept, Content and Cases: Susan Clark, Richard Wallace Josh Goldstein -- Chapter 3: A Vision for Science Integration in Addressing Natural Resource Issues: Robert Costanza -- Chapter 4: Natural Resource Governance: Is Disciplinary Integration Necessary?: Arun Agrawal -- Chapter 5: Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB): Integrating Social Science and the Humanities into Earth Systems Governance: Ilan Kelman, Eugene Rosa, Tom R. Burns, Nora Machado, Lennart Olsson, Paul Ehrlich, Don Kennedy -- Chapter 6: Neuroeconomic: John M. Gowdy -- Chapter 7: The Humanities as Hypotheses for Understanding Resource Challenges and Conflicts: Bron Taylor -- Part 2: Topics in Integration: Chapter 8: Innovative Multi-level Approaches to Risk Governance Research: Armin Haas, Peijun Shi, Qian Ye -- Chapter 9: Livelihoods, Poverty, and Conservation : Lucca Tacconi, Andrew Vayda -- Chapter 10: Who’s afraid of Thomas Malthus?: Jörg Friedrichs -- Chapter 11: Developing Social - Ecological Models of Emerging Infectious Disease: Melissa L. Finucane, Jefferson Fox, Sumeet Saksena, Jim Spencer -- Chapter 12: Social Perspectives on Land Degradation and Desertification: The Case of Migration and Conflict: Andreas Rechkemmer, Walter Amman,  Luc Gnacadja -- Chapter 13: Seeking Multilevel Dimensions for Social-Psychological Research in Society and Natural Resources: Mike Manfredo, Elke Weber, Tara Teel -- Part 3: Methodological Advances for Facilitating Social Science Integration: Chapter 14: Human Agency in Spatial Models of Land Change: Peter Verburg -- Chapter 15: Agent-based Modeling: Randall Boone, Kathleen Galvin -- Chapter 16: Social Network Analysis: Philip Vaughter and Jeff Broadbent -- Chapter 17: Systems and Learning Approaches for Integrating Social Sciences into Policy Processes: Kevin Collins.