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Weather and Society Watch 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:
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? 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.
Other disciplines sometimes classified as social sciences include:
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.
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