Putting the Anthropocene into Practice: Methodological Implications

Human-wolf-livestock coexistence efforts in Washington rely on sustaining wolves' fear of people, often described as "innate" even as it is reproduced through human-wolf interactions.• Mitigating wolf-livestock conflict requires managing human social norms, values, and assumptions about wolf behaviour that are interwoven with ecological fear dynamics. • Interdisciplinary dialogue between the social and biophysical sciences, inspired by critical physical geography, can enhance the study of socioecological processes, including human-wildlife conflict dynamics.Animal fear can be an important driver of ecological community structure: predators affect prey not only through predation, but also by inducing changes in behaviour and distribution-a phenomenon evocatively called the "ecology of fear." The return of wolves to the western United States is a notable instance of such dynamics, yet plays out in a complex socioecological system where efforts to mitigate impacts on livestock rely on manipulating wolves' fear of people. Examining Washington state's efforts to affect wolf behaviour to reduce livestock predation, we argue that this approach to coexistence with wolves is predicated on relations of fear: people, livestock, and wolves can arguably share landscapes with minimal conflict, as long as wolves are adequately afraid. We introduce the "socioecology of fear" as an interdisciplinary framework for examining the interwoven social and ecological processes of human-wildlife conflict management. Beyond frequently voiced ideas about wolves' "innate" fear, we examine how fear is (re)produced through human-wolf interactions and deeply shaped by human social processes. We contribute to the critical physical geography project by integrating critical social analysis with ecological theory, conducted through collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue. Such integrative practice is essential for understanding the complex challenges of managing wildlife in the Anthropocene.

Section: Our Collaborative Research Methodology For More “Critical” H...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The socioecology of fear: A critical geographical consideration of human‐wolf‐livestock conflict

Anderson¹,

Charnley

Epstein

et al. 2022

“…We propose that biophysical sciences open up methodological opportunities for thinking and writing about nonhuman agency and their representations of the world that might help address some of the methodological challenges of “doing” posthumanism, particularly with those species that have less affective “nonhuman charisma” (Lorimer 2007, 915). Citing Latour (1999), Sundberg (2011, 322) suggests that scientific practices can help interpret and represent the stories that landscapes tell through “specific configurations of vegetation, soil types, and myriad other traces.” CPG scholars have also made a similar methodological point: “If our social worlds are fundamentally ecological,” then couldn't “biophysical methods […] help us understand them better?” (Biermann et al 2021, 813).…”

Section: Ecological Livelihoods: Challenges and Opportunities For Cpgmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…If we understand physical geography broadly as the “study of the ‘natural’ elements that constitute landscapes,” then posthumanism is particularly promising for CPG because of the ways in which it centers the nonhuman, the “natural” elements that constitute its objects of research (Harrison 2005, 83). Differently stated, if we recognize that the worlds we inhabit are “fundamentally ecosocial,” then our research practice must attend to the nonhumans as well as the humans who compose those worlds (Biermann et al 2021, 808). Yet, despite these theoretical compatibilities, little research in CPG has engaged with posthumanist theory.…”

Section: Ecological Livelihoods: Challenges and Opportunities For Cpgmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological livelihoods of farmers and pollinators in the Himalayas: Doing critical physical geography using citizen science

Luthra

Cunningham

Fraser

et al. 2022

In farming communities dependent on the cultivation of pollinator‐dependent crops, the livelihoods of farmers are inextricably linked with pollinator health. A global pollination crisis interlinked with a crisis of food production and farmer livelihoods, exacerbated by processes of socio‐environmental change, is emblematic of the Anthropocene and of the kinds of ecosocial problems with which critical physical geography (CPG) engages. We propose examining the farmer‐pollinator system in the Indian Himalayas through an ecological livelihoods approach using a range of collaborative citizen science methods including bloom observations to document pollinator visits, plant phenological observations to document year‐round floral resource availability, and farm diaries to document orchard management practices. An ecological livelihoods approach draws on posthumanist theory, which has remained largely disengaged with methodological questions that are of concern to CPG. Citizen science, although widely used across a range of disciplines, has seen limited engagement in CPG. After elaborating some of the opportunities and challenges that an engagement between CPG, posthumanist theory, and citizen science opens up, we propose a methodology that would be simultaneously epistemological (understanding interdependence between livelihoods of farmers and pollinators) and ontological (imagining and building worlds where farmer and pollinator habitats are recomposed).

“…Using the nodes and weights of the spatialized discourse network as inputs, it might be possible to visualize the way landscapes are stretched and contorted by different actor coalitions, and how these change over time. This provides a potential cartographic avenue for understanding the “ecosocial dynamics that shape our field sites” (Biermann et al 2021, 808).…”

Section: Discourse Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

A missing link? Network analysis as an empirical approach for critical physical geography

Chignell

2022

Methods and concepts from network analysis can provide valuable empirics and novel insights for critical physical geography and related fields.• Network approaches can help to bridge human-physical and qualitative-quantitative divides in geographical research. • Critical physical geographers and network scholars have much to gain from collaboration.Critical physical geography (CPG) calls for integrative research on material landscapes and the socio-political dynamics of scientific knowledge production. Network analysis, a rich tradition of tools and approaches for analyzing relational information, has seen little use in the CPG literature to date. This represents a fruitful opportunity, as many of CPG's core interests-knowledge politics, histories of scientific concepts, and ecosocial relations-can be effectively analyzed using network techniques. In this article, I argue for adapting network approaches to CPG. First, I provide an overview of various network concepts, approaches, and their origins. I then discuss bibliometric network techniques for "science mapping" including co-word, co-authorship, and citation analyses. Next, I describe discourse network analysis, a recent mixed-method approach from political science. Finally, I discuss overlaps with emerging approaches from qualitative and visual network analysis. In each section, I provide existing and hypothetical examples, as well as software and visualization techniques, that demonstrate how network approaches could add new insights to CPG and related scholarship. Linking CPG with the diverse traditions of network analysis has the potential to produce new empirical understandings and bring the field into conversation with a growing body of research that spans the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities.