Yaakov Garb et al 2008 Environ. Res. Lett. 3 045015 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/4/045015
Scenarios in society, society in scenarios: toward a social scientific analysis of storyline-driven environmental modeling
Focus on Global Environmental ScenariosYaakov Garb1,4, Simone Pulver2,4 and Stacy D VanDeveer3,4,5
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Scenario analysis, an approach to thinking about alternative futures based on storyline-driven modeling, has become increasingly common and important in attempts to understand and respond to the impacts of human activities on natural systems at a variety of scales. The construction of scenarios is a fundamentally social activity, yet social scientific perspectives have rarely been brought to bear on it. Indeed, there is a growing imbalance between the increasing technical sophistication of the modeling elements of scenarios and the continued simplicity of our understanding of the social origins, linkages, and implications of the narratives to which they are coupled. Drawing on conceptual and methodological tools from science and technology studies, sociology and political science, we offer an overview of what a social scientific analysis of scenarios might include. In particular, we explore both how scenarios intervene in social microscale and macroscale contexts and how aspects of such contexts are embedded in scenarios, often implicitly. Analyzing the social 'work' of scenarios (i) can enhance the understanding of scenario developers and modeling practitioners of the knowledge production processes in which they participate and (ii) can improve the utility of scenario products as decision-support tools to actual, rather than imagined, decision-makers.
- PACS
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89.65.-s Social and economic systems
- Subjects
- Dates
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Issue 4 (October-December 2008)
Received 21 August 2008, accepted for publication 7 October 2008
Published 15 December 2008
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Scenarios in society, society in scenarios: toward a social scientific analysis of storyline-driven environmental modeling
Yaakov Garb et al 2008 Environ. Res. Lett. 3 045015
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