A social-ecological system (SES) framework increasingly underpins the "resilience paradigm." As with all models, the SES comes with particular biases. We explore these key biases. We critically examine how the SES resilience literature has attempted to define and analyze the social arena. We argue that much SES literature defines people's interests and livelihoods as concerned primarily with the environment, and thereby underplays the role of other motivations and social institutions. We also highlight the SES resilience literature's focus on institutions and organized social units, which misses key aspects of social diversity and power. Our key premise is the importance of inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives. To illustrate this, we draw attention to the critique of earlier ecological anthropology that remains relevant for current conceptualizations of SESs, focusing on the concepts of social diversity and power. And we discuss insights from social anthropology and political ecology that have responded to this critique to develop different ways of incorporating social diversity and power into human-environment relations. Finally, we discuss how these social science perspectives can help improve the understanding of the social" in SES resilience research.

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol19/iss4/art28/ES-2014-7029.pdf

Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: insights from anthropology and political ecology

This article explicitly connects a growing body of specific literature, the political ecology of conservation, to some of the often overlooked, main conceptual components emerging from political anthropology and geography (sources of legitimacy, governmentality, territoriality, or state making), political economy (commoditization, market integration, niche markets, or gentrification), and cultural studies of the environment (cultural transformations of nature, cultural heritage and landscapes, taste, and identity politics). All these concepts and literary fields are at the basis of the contemporary social analysis of conservation policies and their consequences. The article also provides an updated large bibliography on the concepts potentially relevant to a political ecology of conservation. Key Words: conservation, governmentality, taste, nature, commoditization of nature, territoriality

/pdf/political-ecology-and-conservation-policies-some-theoretical-1347isidda.pdf

Political ecology and conservation policies: some theoretical genealogies

Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political Economic Perspectives in Human Biology called for an integration of political economy with ecological and adaptability perspectives in biocultural anthropology. A major goal of this volume was to explore the utility of including political-economic and sociocultural processes in analyses of human biological variation, nutrition, and health. A second goal was to enhance collaboration among subfields and work against the "chasm" that separated complementary perspectives in cultural and biological anthropology. Twenty years hence, new ways to link social inequalities and human biology have emerged in part through contributions of developmental origins of health and disease, epigenetics, microbiomes, and other new methods for tracing pathways of embodiment. Equally important, notions of "local/situated biologies" and "reactive genomes," provide frameworks for understanding biology and health at the nexus of ecologies, societies, and histories. We review and highlight these contributions toward expanding critical approaches to human biology. Developments over the past two decades have reinforced the central role of social environments and structural inequalities in shaping human biology and health. Yet, within biocultural approaches, a significant engagement with historical, political-economic, and sociocultural conditions remains relatively rare. We review potential barriers to such analyses, focusing on theoretical and methodological challenges as well as the subfield structure of anthropology. Achieving politically and socially contextualized and relevant critical biocultural approaches remains a challenge, but there is reason for optimism amid new theoretical and methodological developments and innovations brought by new generations of scholars.

Building on the biocultural syntheses: 20 years and still expanding.

This study investigated the effect of Ethnoscience instruction and moderating effects of school location and parental educational status on students' attitude to science. It employed pretest-posttest, non-equivalent control group quasiexperimental design. Participants were 352 Junior Secondary School 1 (aged 9–12 years) students from two schools, each in urban and rural areas of Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria. Instruments used are: Teachers Instructional Guide on Ethnoscience instruction, Teachers Instructional Guide on Modified Lecture Method and Attitude Toward Science Scale (r = 0.86). Three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance. Significant main effect of treatment on attitude to science (F(1, 347) = 296, p < 0.05) was recorded, with Ethnoscience instruction group performing better than the Modified Lecture Method group. Effect size of treatment was strong (η2 p = 0.46). Also recorded were significant main effects of school loc...

Effects of ethnoscience instruction, school location, and parental educational status on learners’ attitude towards science

Social-ecological changes, brought about by the rapid growth of the aquaculture industry and the increased occurrence of climatic stressors, have significantly affected the livelihoods of coastal communities in Asian mega-deltas. This paper explores the livelihood adaptation responses of households of different wealth classes, the heterogeneous adaptation opportunities, barriers and limits (OBLs) faced by these households and the dynamic ways in which these factors interact to enhance or impede adaptive capacities. A mixed methods approach was used to collect empirical evidence from two villages in coastal Bangladesh. Findings reveal that households’ adaptive capacities largely depend on their wealth status, which not only determine their availability of productive resources, but also empower them to navigate social-ecological change in desirable ways. Households operate within a shared response space, which is shaped by the broader socio-economic and political landscape, as well as their previous decisions that can lock them in to particular pathways. While an adaptive response may be effective for one social group, it may cause negative externalities that can undermine the adaptation options and outcomes of another group. Adaptation OBLs interact in complex ways; the extent to which these OBLs affect different households depend on the specific livelihood activities being considered and the differential values and interests they hold. To ensure more equitable and environmentally sustainable livelihoods in future, policies and programs should aim to expand households’ adaptation space by accounting for the heterogeneous needs and complex interdependencies between response processes of different groups.

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John Lansing

Papers

Ecological anthropology i