Synthesizing theories of environmental governance
Michael Cox, Dartmouth
Normal science involves the interaction between theory and observation. Theories entail observational patterns, and these patterns have implications for the acceptance or rejection of theories. This characterization of science implies the presence of a body of theory, or set of theoretical statements, that is adjusted and distilled over time within each scientific field. For the field of environmental social science (and other related disciplines that explore human-environment interactions), this body largely lives in the minds of researchers and practitioners. Historically there has not existed a set of materials that codifies important social and ecological concepts and the theories that relate these concepts in order to codify the state of scientific knowledge. The primary focus of this talk will be an effort to conduct this synthetic codification, known as the Social-ecological systems meta-analysis database (SESMAD) project.
