Training on multi-agent systems, social sciences, and integrated natural resource management : lessons from an Inter-University Project in Thailand

In this new century, there is an urgent need to integrate and organize knowledge into suitable frameworks to examine essential problems with the people involved in solving them. Recent advances in computer science, particularly distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems (MAS), are creating a strong interest in using this new knowledge and technologies for various applications to better deal with the increasing complexity of our fast-changing world, particularly for studying interactions between societies and their environment. By emphasizing the importance of interactions and points of view, the MAS way of thinking can facilitate high-level interdisciplinary training and collaborative research among scientists working in ecology and social sciences to examine complex problems in the field of integrated natural resource management (INRM). This paper describes how a recent project based on a series of short courses in the field of MAS, social sciences, and INRM at three different universities in Thailand tried to transfer European expertise and research results to an Asian audience of graduate and postgraduate students and young researchers interested in innovative and action-research-oriented interdisciplinary approaches. The course structure, organization, and contents are described and assessed. The course participants are characterized and their opinions are used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this very interdisciplinary training program. The first sustainable outputs and key preliminary lessons learned from this innovative collective learning experience are presented. In conclusion, the authors suggest ways to support the emergence of a regional network of "MAS for INRM" practitioners in Southeast Asia to build on the dynamics begun by this project and serve the need for such interdisciplinary training across Southeast Asia. (Résumé d'auteur

Integrating knowledge from social and natural sciences for biodiversity management: The asymmetric information trap

Most problems related to biodiversity management have an ecological as well as a socio-economic dimension. Consequently, there has been a growing recognition that adequate management recommendations directed at such problems can only be developed if knowledge from ecology, economics and various social science disciplines is taken into account in an integrated manner. To respond to the need for integrated research, a number of approaches have been proposed over the last decade or so with the aim of integrating knowledge from the natural and social sciences. These approaches emerged in different contexts and have integrated different disciplines. As the recognition of the need for integrated research is rather recent the approaches that integrate natural and social sciences are still in a phase of development. In order to further this development, a better understanding of how to tackle specific challenges that arise when knowledge from different disciplines is integrated may be helpful. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this task by analysing and comparing how selected approaches cope with one key challenge of integration: ensuring that state-of-the-art knowledge from both disciplines is used in the integrated approach. We selected the following approaches for comparison: Ecological-economic modelling, political ecology, the resilience approach, multi criteria analysis, and methods of material and energy flow accounting (MEFA) of socio-ecological systems. [...

A legal tool for participatory methods in land systems science: the Thai model of health impact assessment and the consideration of zoonotic diseases concerns into policies

The need to integrate insights from both natural and social sciences, to deal with complex interactions from the global to the local level has been affirmed in different arenas from the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) to the IPBES (2013). The need for integrative studies seems particularly relevant when it comes to understand the numerous and intertwined relationships between health and the environment. The insights of the local communities for daily local observations or to point sudden changes can be precious both for scientists and policy-makers. In Southeast Asia, hotspot of biodiversity and of emerging infectious diseases, policies having an impact on the environment could have unpredicted effects on the dynamic of zoonotic diseases. Community Health Impact Assessment in Thailand and participatory approaches appear appropriate tools for the elaboration of policies considering the indirect effects on zoonotic diseases

From Isotopes to TK Interviews: Towards Interdisciplinary Research in Fort Resolution and the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories

Evolving research in Fort Resolution and the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories, aims to improve understanding of how the natural ecosystem functions and responds to various environmental stressors, as well as to enhance the stewardship of natural resources and the capacity of local residents to respond to change. We seek to integrate approaches that span the natural and social sciences and traditional knowledge understandings of change, employing a research design developed in response to the concerns of a northern community. In doing so, we have strived for a research process that is collaborative, interdisciplinary, policy-oriented, and reflective of northern priorities. These elements characterize the new northern research paradigm increasingly promoted by various federal funding agencies, northern partners, and communities. They represent a holistic perspective in the pursuit of solutions to address complex environmental and socioeconomic concerns about impacts of climate change and resource development on northern societies. However, efforts to fulfill the objectives of this research paradigm are associated with a host of on-the-ground challenges. These challenges include (but are not restricted to) developing effective community partnerships and collaboration and documenting change through interdisciplinary approaches. Here we provide an overview of the components that comprise our interdisciplinary research program and offer an accounting of our formative experiences in confronting these challenges

Growing up beside you: a relational sociology of early childhood

This article will begin by outlining influential attempts by historians and sociologists to develop a more adequate theoretical understanding of past and contemporary childhoods, focusing on the major problems that stem from the pivotal role that ‘developmentalism’ plays in their arguments. I will argue that sociologists can overcome some of their deepest fears about the role of developmental psychology by developing a relational approach that integrates the biological and social aspects of children’s development. In the development of a relational sociology of early childhood we need to make important connections with closely related disciplines, but at the same time draw on and integrate research findings from relevant areas within the social and natural sciences. An alternative perspective drawn from the writings of Norbert Elias will be put forward and illustrated by discussing some of the key concepts that Elias and Vygotsky used to explain the language development of young children

Monitoring and evaluation of a participative planning process for the integrated management of natural resources in the uThukela District Municipality (South Africa)

This paper intends to monitor the changes in perceptions and behaviour of stakeholders induced by the Afromaison participatory process, which is aimed particularly at helping to integrate natural resource management in the uThukela District Municipality, South Africa. To do so, an evaluation protocol has been designed, combining social sciences as well as evaluation techniques. This protocol has been applied to both the initial assessment and the monitoring of the first workshop involving various local stakeholders held under the Afromaison project. The initial assessment showed that it was possible to regroup stakeholders' perceptions into categories according to the functions those actors occupy. Most of those interviewees lacked a holistic understanding of the state of natural resources in the area, and had issues collaborating well with other stakeholders. By monitoring the first workshop, we found that almost half of the participants did not contribute their opinion because they expected getting information rather than actively participating in order to reach a common vision. This monitoring revealed however changes in the normative and cognitive functions of participants. Two interviews conducted few weeks after this workshop tend to indicate that those changes might be long-term. A final evaluation conducted at the end of Afromaison should help us verifying this finding. (Résumé d'auteur

Why resilience is unappealing to social science : Theoretical and empirical investigations of the scientific use of resilience

Resilience is often promoted as a boundary concept to integrate the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. However, it is a troubled dialogue from which social scientists may feel detached. To explain this, we first scrutinize the meanings, attributes, and uses of resilience in ecology and elsewhere to construct a typology of definitions. Second, we analyze core concepts and principles in resilience theory that cause disciplinary tensions between the social and natural sciences (system ontology, system boundary, equilibria and thresholds, feedback mechanisms, self-organization, and function). Third, we provide empirical evidence of the asymmetry in the use of resilience theory in ecology and environmental sciences compared to five relevant social science disciplines. Fourth, we contrast the unification ambition in resilience theory with methodological pluralism. Throughout, we develop the argument that incommensurability and unification constrain the interdisciplinary dialogue, whereas pluralism drawing on core social scientific concepts would better facilitate integrated sustainability research.Peer reviewe

LITERACY EDUCATION FOR QUALITY LIFE

It has long been understood that education affects human’s quality of life as education presents one with access to economy, health, social benefits which the uneducated may not. (Formal) education is often claimed to have started since a child learns to read and write which allows him or her to access abundant sources of knowledge in his or her surroundings. Tompkins (2010) emphasizes that while traditionally literacy simply refers to the ability to read and write words, now literacy embodies a device to take whole part in the technological society of the 21st century. Ability to read and write, under literary approach, is believed to give students a tool to learn not only language but also content subjects in schools – making language a key to effective instruction. In the light of this, the teaching of language, particularly that of English, is redefined and redesigned to not only impart the skills of using a foreign language but also utilize those skills to enhance students’ learning in other subjects. To achieve this, educational practices in Indonesia have embraced and explicated thematic-and-integrated approach to teaching across science and social subjects through the implementation of Curriculum 2013. Since English in a foreign language in Indonesia, its teaching should consider the fundamentals of learning social and natural sciences in their actual classes. More importantly, ‘literacy teacher’ should be well-trained in carrying out effective literary instruction. This paper thus seeks to propose strategies of how literacy instruction should be conducted and literacy teacher should be trained. Key words: literacy, instruction, thematic-and-integrate

Contributions of Socioneuroscience to Research on Coerced and Free Sexual-Affective Desire

Neuroscience has well evidenced that the environment and, more specifically, social experience, shapes and transforms the architecture and functioning of the brain and even its genes. However, in order to understand how that happens, which types of social interactions lead to different results in brain and behavior, neurosciences require the social sciences. The social sciences have already made important contributions to neuroscience, among which the behaviorist explanations of human learning are prominent and acknowledged by the most well-known neuroscientists today. Yet neurosciences require more inputs from the social sciences to make meaning of new findings about the brain that deal with some of the most profound human questions. However, when we look at the scientific and theoretical production throughout the history of social sciences, a great fragmentation can be observed, having little interdisciplinarity and little connection between what authors in the different disciplines are contributing. This can be well seen in the field of communicative interaction. Nonetheless, this fragmentation has been overcome via the theory of communicative acts, which integrates knowledge from language and interaction theories but goes one step further in incorporating other aspects of human communication and the role of context. The theory of communicative acts is very informative to neuroscience, and a central contribution in socioneuroscience that makes possible deepening of our understanding of most pressing social problems, such as free and coerced sexual-affective desire, and achieving social and political impact toward their solution. This manuscript shows that socioneuroscience is an interdisciplinary frontier in which the dialogue between all social sciences and all natural sciences opens up an opportunity to integrate different levels of analysis in several sciences to ultimately achieve social impact regarding the most urgent human problems

Applications of Geoinformatics in Fisheries and Natural Resource Management

Geoinformatics is the art, science or technology dealing with the acquisition, storage, processing production, presentation and dissemination of spatial data or the geoinformation. Geoinformatics has been extensively used in almost all the fields of study, be it natural sciences, social sciences, archaeology, surveying, marketing etc. and you name any field of study for that matter. It shows the importance of Geoinformatics in the present world. Geographic information system (GIS) is the platform on which spatial data is collected, stored, analysed and the information is extracted. The strength of GIS is its ability to integrate data from different sources and carryout spatial analysis to arrive at meaningful conclusions which otherwise would not be possible