ESA Symposia 2011

[human ecology]

Dear All
The Human Ecology Section's symposium for ESA 2011 has been accepted!
This version of Google Groups no longer hosts documents but the
abstract is cut below.
We get more details out soon, once we have finished some site
maintenance.
Hope to see you in Austin though
Cheers
Rob

Title: Planetary Perspectives of Planetary Stewardship.
Submitter's Email: rob.d...@anu.edu.au
Description: Concepts such as Planetary Stewardship must assume that
human individuals and groups can rationally choose to change their
behavior, and thus their environmental impacts, under certain
conditions of knowledge and judgments about prudence and within the
ethical framework that they aspire to match, assuming that they have
the means. This symposium draws together speakers from across a number
of disciplines to improve understanding of the processes driving or
constraining such change. The first speaker will present the Earth as
a biophysical system and discuss the effect of human activity on the
functioning of that system. Planetary Stewardship can be understood as
prescribing behavior that enhances the functioning of the Earth
system. The speakers that follow will discuss a range of socio-
cultural processes that might enable or constrain the voluntary
adoption of the kind of behavior that Planetary Stewardship principles
espouse. Responding from a sociological perspective, the second
speaker will discuss the role of social norms in patterns of
consumption and how in modern production systems individual choices
have global consequences. The next speaker will discuss how humans
learn and adapt, focussing on the key question of how they integrate
knowledge from different backgrounds in order to produce new
understanding. The next speaker will discuss cultural dimensions of
power relations and the role of institutions and political power.
Following this will be a presentation on the partiality of human
perspectives and how common biophysical processes are experienced and
understood differently in local contexts. The following speaker will
draw on insights from different belief systems and the possibilities
that this suggests for different ways of valuing the biophysical
world. The next speaker will present findings from her research on how
ecological scientists see their role as agents of social change and
discusses engaging with Planetary Stewardship from an early career
academic perspective. The final speaker will return to the overarching
question of what does it mean to live a sustainable Good Life with a
discussion of the psychological dimensions of a livable future. These
questions are all pertinent to how Planetary Stewardship might be
framed in a positive and celebratory fashion and how the principles
that it espouses might actually adopted. Special emphasis will be on
the linkage between those aspects of Planetary Stewardship that are
global and common to all and those that are fundamentally local and
contextual. Adequate time has been made available for discussion from
the floor.

[V. Beth Kuser Olsen]

Fantastic!
__________________________________
V. Beth Kuser Olsen, M.S.
Doctoral student
Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Science Graduate Program
Bahram Momen Lab
H.J. Patterson Hall
University of Maryland
College Park MD 20742
v.beth...@gmail.com
____________________________________

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