SOCIAL SCIENCE: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ITS PURPOSE AND PROCESS IN WATERSHED PLANNING

Nels Paulson, PhD

Associate Professor of Sociology

University of Wisconsin-Stout

WHAT IS SOCIAL SCIENCE?

You are probably familiar with these: Social science is certainly a research

oriented way of making sense of the world through surveys, interviews, observations, focus groups, textual analysis, etc., but it’s more than that, too.

Emerged out of enlightenment and August Comte’s attempts to impress women with his new “religion”: Sociology

Believed in positivism and social laws. We can predict the future if we

systematically evaluate our social world.

WHAT IS SOCIAL SCIENCE?

So we collect and analyze data systematically We also must recognize and understand the

“social laws” that exist (i.e. social theory) This comes out of research, but you don’t always

have to do any extra research to predict what will likely occur in the future

Ideally- need to know both theory and research Save money and time and can be more

accurate Example: Farmer Led Councils We might like to know if it would be successful in

South Fork of the Hay River How can we figure this out?

THEORY: DURKHEIM AND SOLIDARITY

With mechanical solidarity you have high collective conscience, but low social morphology

Which means, among other things, that new ideas don’t happen often (and you get bad biases)

Organic solidarity is the opposite (social morphology)

But this can lead to, among other things, anomie…

HAY RIVER FARMER LED POSSIBILITY

Need to have people connected to community (high mechanical solidarity) in order to gain collective conscience

Need those most connected to also be open to new ideas (like BMPs) for social morphology

Call it the “Joel Salatin” effect (farmer highlighted in Food Inc.)

Need to also know more about the Joel Salatins in a watershed, to any extent they do exist in the watershed

Need to also know more about characteristics of those working on watershed and whether they can accommodate the needs of the Joel Salatins

Access to local farmer let initiatives eases transition to BMPs

Not at all Very much

     

Not important

Extremely important

Social network graph of access to farmer led initiatives easing transition to BMPs correlated with importance of improving soil health

Table 1: Correlations for access to local farmer led initiatives, social connections, neighbor/acquaintance participation in BMPs, and betweenneess centrality

   

Important to protect

water quality

even if it harms my personal livelihood

Willing to pay more

to improve water quality

Protecting the

environment will

threaten jobs for

people like me

Improving soil

health.

Guaranteeing land usage

for future generation

s.

Impacts to short run

profit margin

Impacts to short run

yield

Lack of training/

information

Existing policies

SubsidiesBMP

Training

Access to local farmer-led initiatives

Pearson Correlation 0.436* .500** -0.192 0.417* 0.253 -0.25 -0.178 0.056 0.339 .539** 0.378

  Sig. (2-tailed) 0.054 0.025 0.404 0.06 0.269 0.275 0.441 0.81 0.144 0.012 0.122  N 20 20 21 21 21 21 21 21 20 21 18Social connections

Pearson Correlation -0.08 0.399* .445** 0.08 0.134 -0.131 -0.005 .460** .546** 0.223 0.359

  Sig. (2-tailed) 0.737 0.081 0.043 0.729 0.563 0.571 0.982 0.036 0.013 0.332 0.144  N 20 20 21 21 21 21 21 21 20 21 18Neighbor/acquaintance participation in BMPs

Pearson Correlation -0.042 0.208 -0.073 0.309 0.398* -0.195 0.028 0.024 0.308 0.045 .480**

  Sig. (2-tailed) 0.862 0.38 0.752 0.173 0.074 0.397 0.902 0.919 0.186 0.847 0.044  N 20 20 21 21 21 21 21 21 20 21 18Betweenness Centrality

Pearson Correlation 0.235 0.003 -0.226 0.123 0.252 -0.43* -0.475** 0.004 -0.131 0.226 .673***

  Sig. (2-tailed) 0.293 0.99 0.289 0.567 0.235 0.052 0.029 0.987 0.582 0.325 0.002  N 22 23 24 24 24 21 21 21 20 21 18*Correlation is significant at the 0.10 level (2-tailed).**Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).***Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

HAY RIVER FARMER CHARACTERISTICS

HAY RIVER WATERSHED CONSERVATION WORKER CONSTRAINTS

“The government funding sources tend to want to pay for practices and not for people. It’s just the philosophy. A lot of what we’re talking about is people work. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough money to cost-share the practices, it’s all this relationship building and people work…I mean, going out and knocking on doors, talking to people. Increasingly, there is not money for that. The money is all to pour concrete and put up fences and put up gutters and plant stuff and put in structures…And…there is one [planner] and he has a lot of plans that are on his plate.”

HAY RIVER WATERSHED CONSERVATION WORKER CHARACTERISTICS

Strongly Disagree

Disagree Neither Agree nor Disagree

Agree Strongly Agree

45.5%

9.1%

27.3%18.2%

.0%

I have the authority to effectively improve water quality.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR WATERSHED PLANNING?

Each watershed has characteristics that are social, economic, cultural, and political

These follow “social laws”, but humans are hard to predict and some social theory suggests contradictions exist that make context important

Need anthropological, sociological, economic, political science, and other social science disciplines to evaluate those characteristics

Understand all people and institutions, including yourselves (not just program evaluation, but really institutional capacity and community capacity evaluation)

THANK YOU.