Science, Society and the Environment

This interesting book is the outcome of a collaboration between anthropology and the physics of sustainable environmental systems - between natural sciences and social sciences. The book points out that any belief about nature is also a social fact and that the facts of nature and the facts of our social experience of nature can be usefully elucidated. The authors do this with a series of four case studies involving the everyday science involved in cook stoves and lighting, the management of anthropogenic grasslands, dearth and abundance in resource management systems, and differences in perceptions of climate change between and within nations and involving what one might call a moral ecology. The importance of social facts is particularly highlighted in the discussion of perceptions of climate change between north and south, with a detailed chart of arguments and their development. We have large-scale geophysical change at one end and cultural change at the other where we can see moral ecology as part of human ecology. This collaboration makes use of 'boundary objects' across the disciplines including a recognition of the importance of discourse, the view from below, appreciation of a long historical view, the need to be self reflexive and the analogies between natural and social processes. The book shows how fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration can be.