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

[HGG01-09] The triangular relationships revisited: a social scientific consideration on natural sciences and the society

*Gen Ueda¹, Yoshinori OTSUKI², Takahisa Furuichi³, Toru Sasaki⁴ (1.Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, 2.Institute of Geography, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, 3.Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 4.HOSEI University)

Keywords:Social Sciences, Environmental security, Epiphenomenal conservation

This presentation expands the social scientific interests in the relationships between natural/social sciences and the society from the presentation titled "A social scientific consideration on the triangular relationships among natural sciences, social sciences and the society" at JpGU 2022. The dialogue-oriented contribution exemplified triangular relationships between natural sciences, social sciences, and the society, from a social scientific understanding. The triangle consists of three opposite sides (subtenses) seen from a vertex, and 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, the 2022 presentation argued that in the same environmental security arguments, the society looked 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, another example was given to show that natural scientific consideration had 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. The presentation at JpGU 2023 continues to stimulate discussion on these triangular relationships, focusing on cases in a dialogue between natural and social scientists, and examines 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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