Recommendations for Forging Interdisciplinary Collaborations
It was widely recognized by workshop participants that climate change research in the natural sciences often fails
to address the biophysical environment’s effect on real people, and that social scientists are seldom consulted
except as an afterthought in natural science and engineering research projects. It was equally acknowledged that
social scientists tend not to seek out collaborations with natural scientists and engineers and often are uninformed
about major research programs on climate change. The result is that the research of each community does not
tend to be informed by the insights and resources available from the others. This is true not only between the
social sciences and the natural sciences, but among the social sciences themselves. For instance, sociological
research projects seldom incorporate spatial processes, behavioral analyses, or economic models. Inter- and
intra-disciplinary collaboration in research institutes or interdisciplinary proposal writing might be a way to
broaden sociologists’ participation in climate change research. Specific sociological research projects might self-
consciously expand their data collection by, say, adding a spatial or economic component to their research design
or by including colleagues from geography, political science, anthropology, or economics on their research team.
Another critical need identified by workshop participants was for sociologists to be knowledgeable about natural
science research on global climate change. The ability to engage the broader scientific community requires
sociologists to be familiar with the specific tools, knowledges, and approaches that others bring to the study of
climate change. This often necessitates knowledge of the language and technologies of other disciplines, for
instance, familiarity with remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), or material and energy flow
analysis. In addition to ongoing training for current faculty members, participants discussed the importance of
sociology graduate student education in the natural sciences. Workshop participants also acknowledged that no
amount of knowledge about the tools or projects of other disciplines will serve sociology well without a means
of connecting with colleagues in other disciplines and opportunities to collaborate. Funding agency invitations to
sociologists to participate in interdisciplinary workshops, conferences, and collaborative proposals are additional
means to facilitate sociologists’ involvement in interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and training: Workshop participants often reported the added
value in their own research of collaborations with researchers outside of sociology who are also engaged in
global climate change research; these collaborations offered sociologists access to the ideas, models, and tools
of specialists from other disciplines, and enriched the quality of the resulting sociological research. - Encourage sociologists to embrace multi-method frameworks such as qualitative sociological research that
incorporates GIS or remotely sensed data, research that relates data on the material and energy metabolism
of societies to social structural and demographic variables (e.g., population density, urbanization, working
times, social inequalities), and research that interprets data from ecological studies through the lens of power
relations, and broadens definitions of “landscape” from the geological or biological to the political, cultural,
and social. - Increase support of networks and collaborations with natural scientists and engineers. This is important
for knowledge, but also because current funding options often favor projects that include research from the
natural sciences and engineering. - Increase training of sociologists in natural science research approaches for current and future sociologists
engaged in global climate change research. This is especially critical for sociology graduate students who
need exposure to climate change research in the natural sciences.
Part IV: Recommendations for Advancing
Sociological Research on Global Climate Change