SYMP 9-1
Promoting exchange between ecology and social science in ecology's first century: A historical view
Ecology's relations to the social sciences and to applied science have been the subject of perennial discussion within ESA and in the profession. When ecology emerged as a discipline, the social sciences and public health disciplines were also emerging. While it seemed clear that these disciplines should be in communication, given that societal problems stood to benefit from an ecological point of view, for a long time the calls to build “human ecology” had meager results. These discussions intensified during the environmental crises of the 1970s and prompted various experiments to break down barriers to cross-disciplinary interaction. Examples of how ecologists and social scientists viewed this problem in the late-20th century reveal a range of warnings, strategies, and prognoses for the future framed around the general problem of how to encourage cross-disciplinary interactions and synthetic thinking. Since social scientists faced the same challenges as did ecologists, what might be learned from parallel discussions occurring in those related disciplines?
Results/Conclusions
One approach to the challenge of how to tackle multidisciplinary problems emerged from economics and political science and was associated with the work of the late Elinor Ostrom and colleagues on common property resources. These discussions focus squarely on how team science and cross-disciplinary interactions can be made to work and have clear relevance to ecology.