Weather and Society Watch
From the Director

What Are Social Sciences?
by Jeff Lazo*

A meteorologist colleague recently mentioned that it would be helpful if someone explained what the social sciences are. Here is my attempt to begin to do so. I will caveat this by pointing out that I am an economist by training and, although I have worked with experts from several different social sciences, I don’t claim expertise in any of these disciplines. Thus I am happy to receive input, corrections, and/or additions on anything I say about other social sciences—and on economics as well.

I hope you’ve noted that for the last few issues of Weather and Society Watch we have been soliciting and publishing articles along disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to provide more understanding and perspective on the social sciences to our readers (e.g. Tom Behler on sociology in January 2009; Alan Stewart on psychology in April 2009; Gina Eosco on communication in July 2009). We want to develop these articles into a set of resources to help those from outside the social sciences develop a better understanding of the capabilities and constraints of the social sciences. We encourage contributions to this endeavor.

A few questions relate to this effort. The first is, “Why understand what social sciences are?” As we’ve discussed often in the pages of Weather and Society Watch, there is a strong movement in the weather community to better integrate with the social sciences. But underlying this recognition of the importance of developing an end-to-end-to-end weather enterprise is only a vague notion of what the social sciences are and what they can do. This is partly because many of those calling for this integration are physical scientists who, although passionate about doing a better job to benefit society, don’t fully understand the opportunities an integrated weather enterprise presents—and the constraints associated with this desired integration.

The second question is, “What is the difference between doing social science and measuring societal impacts?” I would still like to clarify this better in my thinking, but there is a lot of societal impacts interest and concern in the weather community that doesn’t really require or map one-to-one into social sciences. That is to say that there is a difference between undertaking social sciences and examining societal impacts. Counting dollar damages or people injured or killed may be societal impacts but it is not necessarily social science. I think this distinction is critical to the future of integration into the weather enterprise and suggest that others consider contributing thoughts on this.

Briefly I may say, very simplistically, that measuring societal impacts is largely driven by observation and generally produces data and information. I believe that undertaking social science should be driven by theory and, in addition to producing data and information, should produce “knowledge.” I worry that many people may feel they are doing social science, when in reality they more generally are largely measuring impacts. While the process of measuring impacts is extremely important and often useful in context, it should not take the place of social science.

Finally, the third question is, “Given the desire for integrated and interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, or even transdisciplinary work, why is it important to discuss specific disciplines, also known as stove pipes in some perspectives?” There are several fundamental reasons for maintaining something of a disciplinary perspective:

• Many of the people we should be connecting with still define themselves by disciplinary boundaries
• Most academic and even federal institutions are still structured this way and people are still hired along disciplinary lines
• There is incredible depth with each and every discipline, requiring experts and specialists in each discipline. We cannot and should not all be generalists.

Hiring a “social scientist” is rarely, if ever, the answer to the needs of an organization such as NWS or the weather enterprise. Understanding differences and commonalities is critical to getting the right input.

What is social science?
Social sciences are a group of academic disciplines that study human aspects of the world. The social sciences include anthropology, communication, demography, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. Every social science has a rich history of theory, methods, and applications with outstanding experts in each field and a depth and diversity often unknown to those outside of the discipline.

Even with disciplinary boundaries seemingly well defined—at least while applying to a grad school—in reality many of these boundaries are blurred. For instance, there is an increasing overlap between psychology and economics as some areas in both disciplines study individual human behavior and decision making. So while I cannot adequately and fully explain “social sciences” in a single short article, I’ll try to provide a few thoughts on the different disciplines.

For the (potentially incomplete) list of social sciences below, I’ve attempted to (1) provide a brief definition of the field (Okay, I stole most of these from the universal repository of knowledge called Wikipedia – actually from Simple Wikipedia!), (2) list a few Weather and Society * Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) colleagues or friends of WAS*IS with formal training in this discipline (I know I missed several people out of the nearly 200 WAS*ISers and ask you to help me fill out this list further if I missed you!), and (3) give examples of some of the questions / issues this field could address. I will preface by saying that some of this information has appeared elsewhere (e.g. the report of the NOAA Science Advisory Board Social Sciences Working Group, available online at http://www.sab.noaa.gov/Reports/2009/SAB_SSWG_report_FINALtoNOAA_041609.pdf.

Anthropology (Heather Lazrus, Karen Pennesi, Jennifer Spinney) is the study of how people live their lives now and how they may have lived them in the past. It is a holistic discipline dealing with the integration of different aspects of the social sciences, humanities, and human biology including anthropological linguistics, social and cultural anthropology, ethnology and ethnography.

• Understanding issues of vulnerable populations and weather and climate impacts
• Increasing effectiveness of resource management policies in various socio-cultural environments

Communication (Gina Eosco, Jenifer Martin) deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time, encompassing a wide range of topics and contexts ranging from face-to-face conversation to speeches to mass media outlets, such as television broadcasting.

• Developing methods of communication of NOAA products and services to various stakeholders
• Understanding best practices in presenting and communicating uncertainty in scientific assessments related to weather variability and climate change

Economics (Jeff Lazo, David Letson, Dan Sutter, Rebecca Moore, Steven Stewart) is the study of how people try to make use of limited resources to get what they want. Economists study “human behavior as a relation between scarce means having alternative uses.”

• Establishing net benefits of programs for budgetary justification and program evaluation
• Understanding incentives of participants and stakeholders in organizational and economic processes relevant to NOAA missions

Geography (Eve Gruntfest, Isabelle Ruin, Matt Biddle, Olga Wilhelmi, Burrell Montz) is the study of the Earth and its features, its inhabitants, and its phenomena. Human geography focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created, viewed and managed by humans, as well as the influence humans have on the space they occupy

• Investigating behavioral responses to weather risks
• Developing strategies to improve hazards communication

History (Roger Turner) is the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species, as well as the study of all events in time in relation to humanity.

• How has the science of meteorology developed over time and what weather events have affected or been dealt with in history
• How has society responded to weather risks over time through changes in understanding of weather and weather forecasting and changes in institutions and behaviors

Political Science deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior.

• Analyzing political demand for programs and reactions to programs and regulations
• Understanding governance structures of vulnerable communities
• Understanding constraints and opportunities for interactions with private sector secondary users of NOAA products and services

Psychology (Alan Stewart) is the study of human behavior, thought and feeling. It deals with all actions and reactions of people.

• Understanding how constituents perceive and use NOAA products and services
• Understanding risk perception, risk assessment, and risk communication
• Understanding how people make decisions with regard to weather, climate, ocean hazards and resource use, including intrinsic uncertainty

Sociology (Tom Behler) is the study of societies and how humans act in groups. It concerns itself with the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the organization and development of human social life.

• Understanding interactions within and between groups in response to watches and warnings
• Anticipating and examining societal adaptation to weather risks

Other disciplines sometimes classified as social sciences include:

Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human language.

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills and the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom.

Law is the study of the rules that are capable of enforcement through institutions and in examining these rules, it crosses the boundaries between the social sciences and humanities, depending on one’s view of research into its objectives and effects.

Demography is the statistical study of populations encompassing their size, structure and distribution, and spatial and/or temporal changes in them in response to birth, migration, aging and death.

Social Work is concerned with social problems, their causes, their solutions and their human impacts.

Given how little I have been able to explain here, I encourage readers with specific disciplinary expertise to provide input on their perspectives. We will continue to publish articles on specific disciplines, as well as on specific methods, so please consider contributing to help us build an accurate and complete set of resources on the social sciences.

*Jeff Lazo (lazo@ucar.edu) is the director of the Societal Impacts Program (SIP) at NCAR.