{"id":16572,"date":"2018-11-13T10:36:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T15:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/?p=16572"},"modified":"2018-11-13T10:36:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T15:36:37","slug":"learning-the-science-of-cooperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/2018\/11\/13\/learning-the-science-of-cooperation\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning the Science of Cooperation"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 20, the Mitchell Center held a workshop on Cooperation\u00a0Science\u00a0<\/a>facilitated by<\/p>\n

\"\"
Tim Waring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tim Waring<\/a> and Linda Silka<\/a>, both of the UMaine School of Economics & the Mitchell Center. Twenty faculty and graduate students from a broad array of interdisciplinary fields like Biology and Ecology, Cooperative Extension, and Marine Science attended the three-hour workshop.<\/p>\n

Waring introduced the basic principles and central results of\u00a0cooperation science and drew on examples from Maine and around the world to demonstrate how\u00a0cooperation\u00a0often determines sustainability outcomes. The workshop also explored how\u00a0cooperation\u00a0dynamics can benefit sustainability research, and how researchers might use\u00a0cooperation\u00a0to build new solutions.\"\"<\/p>\n

Says Waring, “The hardest sustainability challenges we face are ones that require us to cooperate to achieve positive outcomes. That’s why cooperation science is necessary.\u201d For example, he adds, achieving lower environmental impacts usually feels personally costly\u2014buy less, reuse more. \u201cThe science of cooperation offers a way to nurture sustainable solutions without feeling such personal cost and isolation.”<\/p>\n

Brie Berry, a doctoral student in Anthropology and Environmental Policy, was among the workshop attendees. Central to her work as a member of the Mitchell Center\u2019s Materials Management<\/a> team is studying social capital as an integral part of materials reuse and the waste reduction.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Linda Silka<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSocial capital is the networks of trust and reciprocity and relationships that connect people,\u201d Berry explains. \u201cIt\u2019s the idea that relationships have value to people and that they give you access to resources and opportunities and can help explain why some people have access to things and others don\u2019t. And you can think about why that would be helpful in terms of cooperation because when you have these relationships it\u2019s easier to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berry, who was only vaguely familiar with the topic of cooperation science, thought the way the workshop was structured was very effective using a combination of some of the science and the literature and then a lot of case studies and examples.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave me a lot of different ways to think about what they were talking about\u2014it wasn\u2019t just abstractions,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Brie Berry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed, much of Waring\u2019s recent work with cooperation science \u00a0involves bringing it down out of the clouds. By making his work more accessible, understandable, and applicable to other faculty and students, they will be better equipped to help increase stakeholder cooperation that can lead to real-world solutions.<\/p>\n

Berry also notes that, after Waring stepped through the basics, \u201cbreaking into small discussion groups and talking about the connections we saw between cooperation and our own research was really helpful. In my group, we talked about forestry problems and culverts, materials reuse and more, and it helped me think about materials management as a problem where we could use cooperation more effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 20, the Mitchell Center held a workshop on Cooperation\u00a0Science\u00a0facilitated by Tim Waring and Linda Silka, both of the UMaine School of Economics & the Mitchell Center. Twenty faculty and graduate students from a broad array of interdisciplinary fields like Biology and Ecology, Cooperative Extension, and Marine Science attended the three-hour workshop. Waring introduced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":963,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/author\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":606,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":606,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/963"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16572"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16595,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572\/revisions\/16595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}