Abstract
For the past two decades phenomena that appeared as isolated processes, such as deforestation, ozone depletion, the extinction of some animal species, and air pollution, are now being perceived as part of a broader pattern of global change. The challenge for social scientists is to study local environmental and social changes that are associated with global trends. This field of study is being carved out as the human dimensions of global environmental change (Jacobson/Price 1990). Calling it ‘global environmental change’ points to the fact that there may also be research fields on global economic change or global cultural change, although it has been suggested that the term globalization be used mainly to refer to such social processes.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was originally published as a chapter on: “Human Dimensions of Global Change”: in: Arizpe, Lourdes; Paz; Fernanda; Velázquez, Margarita: Culture and Global Change: Social Perceptions of Deforestation in the Lacandona Rainforest in Mexico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996): 9–18. Permission to republish this text in this anthology was granted by Aaron McCulloug and Debra Shafer on 9 July 2013. Printed copies of the original book may still be obtained at: http://www.press.umich.edu/14545/culture_and_global_change.
- 2.
In May 1990 the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) held a meeting on ‘Science and Its Partners’ to establish a dialogue between universities, private sector companies, and international science organizations, and governments on the challenges of global change.
- 3.
T. Rosswall, personal communication, committee meeting on Human Dimensions of Global Change, April 1990, Paris.
- 4.
Workshop on Global Change, sponsored by the Office for Interdisciplinary Earth Sciences, in which fifty natural, physical, and social scientists participated, 27 July–10 August, in Snowmass, Colorado.
- 5.
The International Social Science Council, Standing Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change; see Jacobson and Price (1990). The committee is headed by Harold Jacobson and in its initial phase included Lourdes Arizpe, Daniel Bertaux, Ashish Bose, Takashi Fujii, Leszek Kosinski, Kurt Pawlik, Renat Perelet, Martin Price, and Robert Worcester.
- 6.
Daniel Bertaux discussed this point at one of the meetings of the ISSC UN and UNESCO Standing Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change. We are grateful to the committee members for the debates, which provoked many of the reflections described in this book.
- 7.
We wish to acknowledge Benjamin Mayer’s participation in the analysis for this section.
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Arizpe, L. (2014). Human Dimensions of Global Change. In: Migration, Women and Social Development. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06572-4_13
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