The major thread of this 2017 Social Sciences Winter School will be to address issues at the interface between society and environment, especially around water and resource management, through the lens of the social sciences, in different milieus and scale of interpretation, and with different thematic focus and methodological frameworks.
Most research in social sciences has historically focused on social, political, cultural and economic systems somewhat in isolation from their biophysical surroundings, the environment being considered as merely a backdrop for social actions and the functioning of social systems. However, it is now widely recognised that human societies cannot be understood without analysing their interactions with the environments that supported them; as it is also widely understood that most terrestrial and near-shore environments have been and are profoundly shaped by human actions and policies.
Indeed, the past five decades or so have seen the traditional nature/culture divide being increasingly challenged on the conceptual and analytical ground of various field disciplines. Along with the growing awareness of the ecological and social challenges facing society and all life on earth, the study of socio-environmental issues has become of major concern to a wide research community of both scholars and practitioners from various disciplines, so that we now refer to “environmental social sciences”.
Themes and scientific questionings and approaches to explore the complex relationships between society and environment are many and call for interdisciplinary thinking. Any socioenvironmental issue – around resource perception, use, management, politics, appropriation, water access, sustainability, depletion, environmental inequalities and injustices, health and sanitation, cultural landscapes, land use and land changes, vulnerabilities to environmental hazards and changes, social construction of knowledge on the environment, and so on – can be studied from a multiplicity of angles and disciplines. Data and information can be extracted and produced from various areas and fields. Approaches are heterogeneous, qualitative and quantitative, combining localised and multi-sited research, diachronic and synchronic perspectives, and statistical, discursive or spatial analyses. There is no single methodological nor theoretical framework.
This year, the objective of the SSWSP is to expose students and young researchers to research frontiers in this field of environmental social sciences.
Workshop 1 – Urban Ideals and Sanitation Experiences: Toward a New Research Agenda
Coordinator: Rémi de Bercegol
Invited tutors: Abhinav Vinayakh Shankar Narayan, Anju Dwivedi, Lucas Dengel, Ambarish Karunanithi Ambar, Chloé Leclère, Arkaja Singh
Workshop 2 – Exclusionary Regimes and Resource Appropriation: Conceptual and Methodological Dynamics
Coordinator: Thanuja Mummidi
Invited tutors: Sangeeta Dasgupta, Raphaël Mathevet, Felix Padel, Jayaprakash P. Rao, Ravi Rebbapragada
Workshop 3 – Tackling Socio-environmental Issues: Stakes and Potentials of Using Geospatial Technologies
Coordinators: Anne Casile, Rémy Delage
Invited tutors: Stéphanie Duvail, Kumar Akhilesh, Vincent Herbreteau, Shanti Pappu, Olivier Telle
