1. Structure of information (part 4): World views
a. World views
definition:
3 example taxonomies
Natural Capital World Views (NatCap)
- cornucopian
- industrial ecologist
- committed environmentalist
- deep ecologist
Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)
- Global orchestration
- Adapting mosaic
- Techno-garden
- Fortress world
Culture Theory (CT)
- Hierarchistic
- Egalitarian
- Individualistic
- Fatalistic
Table that roughly compares these three taxonomies
Natual Capital |
MEA |
Culture Theory |
| |
|
|
| Cornucopian |
Techno-garden |
|
| |
|
Individualist |
| Industrial Ecol |
|
|
| |
Global Orchestra |
Hierarchist |
| Committed Envir |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Deep Ecology |
Adapting Mosaic |
Egalitarian |
| |
|
|
| |
Fortress World |
Fatalist |
b. Cognitive tools and metaphors that are representive of the Culture Theory taxonomy
Table of tools & metaphors
| World View |
Favored Cognitive Tools |
Metaphors |
| Egalitarian |
network viewer |
|
| Hieraristic |
systems viewer |
|
| Individualistic |
|
survival of the fittest |
| Fatalistic |
|
|
c. Detour - Culture Theory
hypothesizes that there are a limited ways that humans can percieve the world
Verweij et al. 2006
d. World views are ways of acting on the structures of information
utopia = if your view fits the "real" structure
dystopia = if your view of the world is not the "real" structure
we don't have to know what's real and not real to compare the outcomes of different scenarios
looking for the outcomes where a mismatch is good, bad, neutral
simple example:
- You think that the city's streets are organized on a grid and that almost all of the streets go through.
- Actually, only a few streets go through and these are labelled (if you know where to look).
- You get hopelessly lost hunting around for streets.
e. Examples of this approach
Population growth - short to show mismatch and risk of the mismatch
van Asselt & Rotmans 1996 - Figure 10
Global climate change, showing the self consistent stories
Verweij et al 2006
f. Conclusions: Importance of plurality in search and implementation of solutions
Douglas & Wildavsky 1982
Decisions about the future are really about risk
Making decisions about population or climate change
policies
is essentially dealing with risk.
Different groups (i.e. cultures) have different views of risk.
4 types of risk (foreign affairs, crime, pollution, economic collapse)
different groups worry more about some of these risks (hier, hier, egal, individ - respectively)
There is no agreed upon definition for "acceptable risk".
need to continutally discuss and renegotiate this
Some people think that science has refined our ability to deal with "acceptable risk"
hasn't really changed how we deal with human deaths
cause of death, accidental or natural causes (what's natural?)
Scientists can't agree
pg 62 - in a conference about the atmosphere Margaret Mead says essentially that "Left to their own devices, in other words, human beings will take more risks than are good for them. But it is hard for scientists to get others to attend to future dangers if they cannot agree on what will be dangerous." <!-- quoting the authors not Mead -->
"The illustrious participants were divided into two factions, one stressing that the world ecosystem had worked for millions of years, accommodating large changes, so we are best off leaving it alone, and the others saying that it was so complicated that even small changes could have great importance." <!-- nature is robust vs. nature is fragile -->
<!-- similar to hubbub when Lovelock's Gaia was used as an excuse for dumping pollution -->
pg 186 - Risk is a collective construct
"The idea that public perception of risk and its acceptable levels are collective constructs, a bit like language and a bit like aesthetic judgement, is hard to take.
Wrong to make a division between mind and nature
pg 193 - confusion about risk is due to "The wrong division between the reality of the external world and the gropings of the human psyche have allocated real knowledge to the physical sciences and illusions and mistakes to the field of psychology. Causality in the extrnal world is generally treated as radically distinct from the results of perception." <!-- see Gibson and Reed -->
pg 194 - "inappropriateness of dividing the problem between objectively calculated physical risks and subjectively biased individual perceptions>"
Preparing for specific risks may make other risks more dangerous
195 - preparing for risks decreases the damage from those particular risks but may increase the susceptability of the society to other, surprise catastrophes because all the research is tied up in addressing the percieved risks
pg 196 - striving for stability can lead to worse outcomes because there were no disturbances
"Resilience in the capacity to use change to better cope with the unknown; it is learnign to bounce back. "
Addressing problems
my typology --
Douglas's
FINAL MESSAGE |
| There are multiple world views that describe how the world should work. |
| No one view is correct. A functional society needs a dynamic blend of all four. |
| Since there is no predeterimed structure, we need to use multiple perspectives, cross sector, and structure creating approaches (entrepreneurial approaches) |
g. Reference list
Alcamo, J. e. a. (2003). Ecosystems and human well being: a framework assessment/ Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. Washington, D.C., Island Press.
Douglas, M., and Aaron Wildavsky (1982). Risk and Culture: An essay on the selection of technical and environmental dangers. Berkeley, University of California Press.
van Asselt, M. B. A., and Jan Rotmans (1996). "Uncertainty in perspective." Global Environmental Change 6(2): 121-157.
van Asselt, M. B. A., and Jan Rotmans (2002). "Uncertainty in integrated assessment modelleing: from positivism to pluralism." Climate Change 54: 75-105.
Verwiej, M. (2006). Is the Kyoto Protocol Merely Irrelevant, or Positively Harmful, for hte Efforts to Curb Climate Change? Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World. M. a. M. T. Verwiej, Palgrave: 31 - 60.
Verwiej, M., Mary Douglas, Richard Ellis, Christopher Engel, Frank Hendriks, Susanne Lohmann, Steven Ney, Steve Rayner and and Michael Thompson (2006). The Case for clumsiness. Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World. M. a. M. T. Verwiej, Palgrave Mcmillan: 1 - 30.
Verwiej, M., and Michael Thompson (2006). Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World: Governance, Politics and Plural Perceptions, Palgrave Macmillan.
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