[H-GG01] Dialogues on natural resources and environment between earth and social sciences

[HGG01-10] A social scientific consideration on the triangular relationships among natural sciences, social sciences and the society

*Gen Ueda¹ (1.Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University)

Keywords:dialogue, environmental security, epiphenomenal conservation, triangular relationships

This dialogue-oriented contribution exemplifies triangular relationships between natural sciences, social sciences, and the society, from a social scientific understanding. The triangle consists of three opposite sides seen from a vertex. A social scientific vertex views the relationships between the society and natural sciences (or human-natural resource relations), when examining how the society employs environmental security arguments (for instance, Bocchi et al. 2006) in depoliticising and justifying external/military intervention in "natural resource-based conflicts" (Peluso and Watts 2001, Le Billon 2001). Second, in the same environmental security arguments, the society looks into the debate between natural and social sciences in seeking simple, deterministic, and essentialist understanding of the connection between the nature and the society (for instance, the former French President Hollande's statement at the COP21 Paris Conference, November-December 2015, that the fight against global warming and the fight against terrorism cannot be separated). Third, to take another example, natural scientific consideration has significant insights on the relationships between social sciences and the society. In the discussion on epiphenomenal conservation (Alvard 1994, 1995, 1998) and issues of local/indigenous knowledge (Fennell 2008), we learn how social scientific understanding of the "ecologically-noble" knowledge of a society utilising natural resources can simplistically romanticise their "sustainable" relationship. This dialogue is intended to examine how we need to be careful in facing the triangular relationships so as not to simplistically generalise from a particular phenomenon in a particular time-space setting and scale.

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