Environmental Social Sciences
Methods and Research Design

A comprehensive 2010 summary of interdisciplinary social methods and research strategies for analysis of the complex relationship between environments and societies.

Ismael Vaccaro (Edited by), Eric Alden Smith (Edited by), Shankar Aswani (Edited by)

9780521125710, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 November 2010

396 pages, 41 b/w illus. 20 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.63 kg

'… an important contribution to the field … it provides the reader with an overview of the field without championing one theoretical or methodological approach over the others …' Journal of Anthropological Research

The relationship between human communities and the environment is extremely complex. In order to resolve the issues involved with this relationship, interdisciplinary research combining natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities is necessary. In this 2010 book, specialists summarise methods and research strategies for various aspects of social research devoted to environmental issues. Each chapter is illustrated with ethnographic and environmental examples, ranging from Australia to Amazonia, from Madagascar to the United States, and from prehistoric and historic cases to contemporary rural and urban ones. It deals with climate change, deforestation, environmental knowledge, natural reserves, politics and ownership of natural resources, and the effect of differing spatial and temporal scales. Contributing to the intellectual project of interdisciplinary environmental social science, this book shows the possibilities social science can provide to environmental studies and to larger global problems and thus will be of equal interest to social and natural scientists and policy makers.

1. Introduction E. A. Smith and I. Vaccaro
2. People, numbers, and natural resources: demography in environmental research O. Beltran
3. Production decisions and time allocation: a guide to data collection R. Hames
4. Analyzing the politics of natural resources: from theories of property rights to institutional analysis and beyond A. Poteete
5. Extreme events, tipping points and vulnerability: methods in political economy of environment E. C. Jones
6. Local communities and natural resources: ethnobiology in practice L. Zanotti, D. Glover and J. Sepez
7. Mapping histories: cultural landscapes and walkabout methods V. Strang
8. Metaphors and myths in news reports of an Amazonian lost tribe: society, environment and literary analysis C. Slater
9. Water decision-makers in a desert city: text analysis and environmental social science Amber Wutich and C. Gravlee
10. Linking human and natural systems: social networks, environment and ecology J. Johnson and D. Griffith
11. Khat commodity chains in Madagascar: multi-sited ethnography at multiple scales L. Gezon
12. Spatio-temporal methodologies in environmental anthropology: geographic information systems, remote sensing, landscape changes and local knowledge E. Brondizio and R. R. Chowdhury
13. Deep time, diachronic change, and the integration of multi-scalar data: archaeological methods for exploring human-environment dynamics E. Jones
14. Comparing trajectories of climate, class and production: an historical ecology of American yeomen M. Scholl, D. N. Murray and C. L. Crumley
15. Anthropology and natural resource management: methodological integrations S. Aswani.

Subject Areas: Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Conservation of the environment [RNK], Biology, life sciences [PS], Probability & statistics [PBT], Anthropology [JHM]