CITATION: Folke, C., et al. 2016. Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecology and Society, 21(3):41, doi:10.5751/ES-08748-210341.

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Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science

Using the novel technique of topic modelling, this paper examines thematic patterns and their changes over time in a large corpus of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports produced in the oil sector. Whereas previous research on corporate communications has been small-scale or interested in selected lexical aspects and thematic categories identified ex ante, our approach allows for thematic patterns to emerge from the data. The analysis reveals a number of major trends and topic shifts pointing to changing practices of CSR. Nowadays ‘people’, ‘communities’ and ‘rights’ seem to be given more prominence, whereas ‘environmental protection’ appears to be less relevant. Using more established corpus-based methods, we subsequently explore two top phrases - ‘human rights’ and ‘climate change’ that were identified as representative of the shifting thematic patterns. Our approach strikes a balance between the purely quantitative and qualitative methodologies and offers applied linguists new ways of exploring discourse in large collections of texts.

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Doing well by talking good? A topic modelling-assisted discourse study of corporate social responsibility

Neo-Darwinian evolution is widely acknowledged as the key framework for understanding the form and function of living systems, including myriad aspects of animal behavior. Yet extensions to human behavior and society are perennially challenged; debates are vociferous and seemingly irresolvable, and evolutionary approaches to human behavior are marginalized within much of anthropology and other social sciences. This review explores this contested terrain, arguing that although many critiques of evolutionary analyses of behavior are faulty, some valid concerns must be addressed. Human agency, behavioral plasticity, and the partial autonomy of cultural and historical change present real challenges to the standard evolutionary framework. However, several additions to the standard framework currently employed by evolutionary anthropologists and others address these concerns and provide a more comprehensive understanding of human behavioral evolution and adaptation. These additions include phenotypic adaptation...

https://faculty.washington.edu/easmith/Agency&adaptation-ARA2013.pdf

Agency and Adaptation: New Directions in Evolutionary Anthropology

Cultural adaptation has become central in the context of accelerated global change with authors increasingly acknowledging the importance of understanding multilevel processes that operate as adaptation takes place. We explore the importance of multilevel processes in explaining cultural adaptation by describing how processes leading to cultural (mis)adaptation are linked through a complex nested hierarchy, where the lower levels combine into new units with new organizations, functions, and emergent properties or collective behaviours. After a brief review of the concept of "cultural adaptation" from the perspective of cultural evolutionary theory and resilience theory, the core of the paper is constructed around the exploration of multilevel processes occurring at the temporal, spatial, social and political scales. We do so by examining small-scale societies' case studies. In each section, we discuss the importance of the selected scale for understanding cultural adaptation and then present an example that illustrates how multilevel processes in the selected scale help explain observed patterns in the cultural adaptive process. We end the paper discussing the potential of modelling and computer simulation for studying multilevel processes in cultural adaptation.

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Multilevel processes and cultural adaptation: Examples from past and present small-scale societies

Since the coining of the term “sustainability/sustainable development,” diverse and contested understandings of sustainability theory and practice have circulated both within the academy and the public at large. For the most part, sustainability has been approached from a very science-dominated perspective. That is only part of the story: while science is important for sustainability, science alone cannot account for the many situated dimensions of life. In contrast to science, story—or narrative—as both a mode of knowing and process of knowledge construction, can account for life’s place-, time-, and event-dependent dimensions. This paper performs a narrative analysis of eight different conceptual frameworks of sustainability—Deep Ecology, Social Ecology, Ecofeminism, Environmental History and Human Geography/Ecology, Complex Adaptive Systems, Political Ecology, Ecological Economics, and Business and Sustainability—to identify where these frameworks are commensurate and irreconcilable, with the aim of exploring a coherent alternative to current practice and conventional ways of thinking.

What is the story with sustainability? A narrative analysis of diverse and contested understandings

Complex Adaptive Systems in the Humanities

Evolutionary game theory provides a set of tools that can be used to model the evolution of social contracts. These models traditionally take the game individuals play as fixed and consider how behavior within this game may change over time. However, one of the most important aspects of the formation of social contracts is the evolution of the game itself. This chapter presents a method for modeling evolving games that fits within the standard methods of evolutionary game theory and applies this approach to examples relevant to the evolution of the social contract. The scope and limits of this method are discussed and this way of representing evolving games is contrasted with other approaches that have been considered.

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Evolving Games and the Social Contract

In nineteenth-century Germany, breakthroughs in printing technology and an increasingly literate populace led to an unprecedented print production boom that has long presented scholars with a challenge: how to read it all? This anthology seeks new answers to the scholarly quandary of the abundance of text. Responding to Franco Moretti's call for "distant reading" and modeling a range of innovative approaches to literary-historical analysis informed by theburgeoning field of digital humanities, it asks what happens when we shift our focus from the one to the many, from the work to the network. The thirteen essays in this volume explore the evolving concept of "distant reading" and its application to the analysis of German literature and culture in the long nineteenth century. The contributors consider how new digital technologies enable both the testing of hypotheses and the discovery of patterns and trends, as well as how "distant" and traditional "close" reading can complement each another in hybrid models of analysis that maintain careful attention to detail, but also make calculation, enumeration, and empirical descriptioncritical elements of interpretation. Contributors: Kirsten Belgum, Tobias Boes, Matt Erlin, Fotis Jannidis and Gerhard Lauer, Lutz Koepnick, Todd Kontje, Peter M. McIsaac, Katja Mellmann, Nicolas Pethes, Andrew Piper and Mark Algee-Hewitt, Allen Beye Riddell, Lynne Tatlock, Paul A. Youngman and Ted Carmichael. Matt Erlin is Professor of German and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Lynne Tatlock is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, both at Washington University, St. Louis.

Distant Readings: Topologies of German Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century

Character Networks for Narrative Generation: Structural Balance Theory and the Emergence of Proto-Narratives

This paper is an analysis of the NST (Nanoscience and Technology) exhibit at the DM (Deutsches Museum) from the point of view of a German studies scholar and a nanoscientist. Established in 2005, the exhibit and its associated lectures, tours, and documentation purport to make the public more familiar with the new technology and its applications. Our task was to evaluate the science as it is presented and, equally importantly, the story the museum tells about NST, since science can never be isolated from its cultural narrative; it can never be culled from the culture in which it is embedded despite our penchant for a neat division between these two realms. By evaluating the science as it is presented in the museum and considering it within its German cultural context, we offer an analytical overview of NST in the public sphere. Secondly, we cast our eye toward discerning the ‘why’ of the exhibit. Is it designed to civilize and enlighten and thus empower the public in their understanding of NST as an emerging technology? Does the exhibit have a propagandistic aspect designed to sway the public in hope of avoiding the difficult struggles that have embroiled emergent technologies in the past? Or, is the nanoexhibit a hybrid of each approach intended to both enlighten and sway?

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Paul A. Youngman

Papers

Complex Adaptive Systems in the Humanities

Evolving Games and the Social Contract

Distant Readings: Topologies of German Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century

Character Networks for Narrative Generation: Structural Balance Theory and the Emergence of Proto-Narratives

A Nanochemist and a Nanohumanist Take a Walk Through the German Museum: An Analysis of the Popularization of Nanoscience and Technology in Germany