| 英文摘要: | Castree reply —
Although they challenge some of our claims1, Myanna Lahsen and colleagues2 and Lauren Rickards3 agree with us that a new intellectual climate ought to prevail in the world of global-change science. We concur with Lahsen et al.2 that there are other (perhaps better) examples than those that we chose to illustrate the tendency of global change scientists to presume that a 'single, seamless concept of integrated knowledge' is realizable and desirable1; Paul Palmer and Matthew Smith provide a recent case in Nature4. We apologise if we misrepresented Barnes et al.5, and applaud the recent efforts of Barnes and Dove to detail how anthropology can help us better understand climate change6.
However, while a few geoscientists sympathetic to the wider environmental social sciences and humanities (ESSH) will certainly help change the intellectual (and associated policy) climate, the challenge is deeper and wider than Lahsen et al.2 acknowledge. First, many social scientists interested in the 'human dimensions' of environmental change lack understanding of, or even interest in, the critical and interpretive traditions of ESSH subjects. For instance, a recent high-profile manifesto for interdisciplinary energy studies brackets essential questions of social power, cultural conflicts, spiritual beliefs and the like7. It implicitly aligns social science with attempts to progressively 'green' current energy systems while ignoring the core concerns of the environmental humanities. Second, very many ESSH researchers who could help geoscientists, policymakers and others reframe the 'problem' of anthropogenic environmental change are disconnected from the networks and forums where ideas get translated into public debates and ultimately into actions. They speak to, and write for, like-minded academics and their students but rarely involve themselves in things like Future Earth8. This partly reflects established divisions of academic labour that both separate researchers and attach varied levels of prestige to their respective endeavours.
“We need not only a new social contract for such science but a new kind of science in the bargain.” |