Expanding the role of social science in conservation through an engagement with philosophy, methodology, and methods

Abstract

1. The Special Feature led by Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, and Geneletti (Methods Ecology and Evolution, 9, 7-9, 2018) sought to highlight the importance of "qualitative methods" for conservation. The intention is welcome, and the collection makes many important contributions. Yet, the articles presented a limited perspective on the field, with a focus on objectivist and instrumental methods, omitting discussion of some broader philosophical and methodological considerations crucial to social science research. Consequently, the Special Feature risks narrowing the scope of social science research and, potentially, reducing its quality and usefulness. In this article, we seek to build on the strengths of the articles of the Special Feature by drawing in a discussion on social science research philosophy, methodology, and methods.2. We start with a brief discussion on the value of thinking about data as being qualitative (i.e., text, image, or numeric) or quantitative (i.e., numeric), not methods or research. Thinking about methods as qualitative can obscure many important aspects of research design by implying that "qualitative methods" somehow embody a particular set of assumptions or principles. Researchers can bring similar, or very different, sets of assumptions to their research design, irrespective of whether they collect qualitative or quantitative data.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Conservation and the social sciences: Beyond critique and co‐optation. A case study from orangutan conservation

“…One possibility is to find more effective ways of co‐opting social science methods and knowledge into orangutan conservation policies, projects and organizations. However, there is a risk that, in being abstracted from social scientists, such methods and knowledge will prove only superficially useful (Bennett & Roth, ; Moon et al, ). The current article thus aims to show the value of sustained collaboration between conservation scientists, practitioners and social scientists—including those whose research may initially seem irrelevant or extraneous to conservation.…”

“…This is manifested, for example, in the increasingly widespread use of the term ‘conservation social science’—defined by Bennett, Roth, Klain, Chan, Christie, et al (, p. 94) as ‘diverse traditions of using social science to understand and improve conservation policy, practice and outcomes’—and a rush of publications that expound on different social sciences and offer concrete recommendations for conservationists seeking to engage with them (e.g. Bennett & Roth, ; Bennett, Roth, Klain, Chan, Clark, et al, ; Crandall et al, ; Moon & Blackman, ; Moon et al, ; St John, Keane, Jones, & Milner‐Gulland, ; Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, & Geneletti, ).…”

“…Second, depictions of the scope and nature of the social sciences can be overly vague or narrow, resulting in superficial rather than genuinely transformative efforts to integrate them into conservation practice (e.g. Bennett & Roth, ; Bennett, Roth, Klain, Chan, Clark, et al, ; Kovács & Pataki, ; Moon et al, ). In this way, social scientific methods and insights may simply end up getting co‐opted into existing conservation programmes.…”

“…In particular, we were keen to explore ways of nudging the conservation–social science relationship beyond two common impasses (which have also been noted by Brockington, Scholfield, & Ladle, ; Brosius, ; Larsen, ; Mascia et al, ; Redford, ; West & Brockington, ). These are as follows: the long‐running, and still dominant, tendency among social scientists to critique conservation (Section 2.3.2; Kiik, ; Larsen, ; Redford, ); and the risk, alluded to above, of social scientific methods and knowledge simply being co‐opted for pre‐existing conservation agendas (see also Bennett & Roth, , p. A16; Moon et al, , p. 2). Against this backdrop, we asked, how could we collaborate productively across difference while respecting and exploiting our distinctive strengths?…”

“…For example, Bennett, Roth, Klain, Chan, Christie, et al () and Bennett, Roth, Klain, Chan, Clark, et al () recommend integrating social scientific methods and research into conservation policy and practice, whereas Sutherland et al () focus on the instrumental deployment of qualitative methods in ecological and conservation research. On a more critical, reflexive note, Bennett and Roth (), Moon et al () and Sandbrook et al () advocate using social scientific lenses to interrogate and transform the most basic premises of both conservation research and action.…”