Geography 2412: Lecture Notes

September 9: Introduction and Overview to Social Systems (pp. 32-38)

[Note: we skip the material in Chap 1 on Ecosystems, we’ll return to it later. This class will stress the human side of the equation, so we move right into the basic notion of the structure and behavior of human society].

Human “socio-cultural systems”

We want to know about the structure and behavior of human systems because we want to know how they will respond, say, to population growth, land degradation, etc. We’ll discuss how societies (e.g., American society), institutions (like, say, the US Forest Service), and individuals behave.

Our material gets a littler thicker here. It is, after all, difficult to encapsulate all of human society as a phenomenon in a few categories. But Harper tries, focusing on Culture and Social Structure. Together, along with the “Material Infrastructure” (or material culture) they make up: Sociocultural Systems.

In Table 2.1, the key elements are:

· Culture: the information, knowledge, traditions and lifeways held and practiced by an identifiable human group. This has always been a difficult idea to define, so don’t worry about a perfect definition for the exams. Indeed, most use of this word is quite informal, we speak of, say, American culture; ranching culture, urban culture, etc. But two very important elements of culture are:

· Worldview: the totality of cultural beliefs and belief systems about the world around them shared by members of a group. Groups vary a lot in how they see the world working: whether they are dominant or nature or deities are dominant, how people should interact with each other and with nature; what is “fair” or right conduct; etc. I don’t think it is stretching it too much to say that industrialized societies tend to share a world view that is technological, utilitarian, merchantile, and mechanistic. Harper would put some of these views under paradigms:

· Paradigms: A narrower, implicit model of how the world works, shared by a group. To describe a paradigm you have to define the regime to which it applies: so, groups may have a paradigm of how economies work (or should work); how ecosystems function, etc. Here we focus, of course, on paradigmatic views of environment and ecosystems.

Social-Structure:

· World system: the globalizing system of geo-politics and economic linkages and interactions, with some areas and groups of nation-states dominating various aspects and time periods.

· Society: identifiable groups, usually thought of a ‘cultures” like Inuvik.

· Nation-state: the formal, established national entity, typically with firm borders and soverign powers and policies.

· Complex organizations: Often formal agencies, bureacracies, etc. We’ll talk about many of these, like the federal agencies, or the UN Environment Program, as we go along. An important theme of agencies is that one can argue that they hold the exhibit worldviews and paradigms. The example offered in class was that Forest Services (whatever they are formally named) around the world tend to have a utilitarian, resource extraction, and interventionist approach to forest management. Their scientific paradigm of silviculture is base don the idea that forests can be managed to produce more efficiency than they do naturally, so foresters thin trees, suppress fires, replace native species with others, etc., all to boost the net productivity in terms of timber production. In this way, we will speak of agencies as exhibiting behaviors just like individuals do, though some social scientists might argue against such a concept, especially if we go so far as to speak of agencies have “personalities” or exhibiting pathologies (so I’ll try to avoid going that far). .

· Small groups: we’ll also run into many local groups that have formed up around environmental issues, often called “interest groups” or advocacy groups, or watchdog groups, or “Non-Governmental Organizations” (NGOs).

Be aware here that there are some overlaps and ambiguities in these classes. For instance, in common parlance a group like the Berbers of North Africa (mentioned on p. 34) would be called a “culture.” But this scheme they are a society. Also, America is a nation-state, but you can certainly speak of American society and American culture. Given this, you are not responsible for memorizing definitions of the elements in Table 2.1. We’ll focus on a few, especially:

Nation-states (e.g., how nation states and some societies are responding to global warming).

Agencies (formal organizations and bureaucracies) like the US Forest Service

Groups: NGOs, environmental orgs, etc.

Individuals: the behavior of individuals, which may or may not reflect the groups, agencies, and nations to which they belong.

One final point: Harper argues (pp. 37-38) that individuals and groups respond to the environment in the way that they have “cognized” it; that is, have perceived and interpreted it based on various factors (like their culture, personal experience, and training; in class we added: family and peer group; religion, and media as factors in how different people and groups cognize the environment. He postulates a “Dominant Social paradigm” to which we’ll return later. On Sept. 11 (next lecture) I’ll explore some of these notions, along with paradigms, using widlfires in the West as a theme.