Society and nature in the Lower River Nyando Basin, Kenya
type: CreativeWork
description: Society-nature relations are regarded as being in crisis; climate change, droughts, floods, environmental degradation have become familiar features in today’s news. While there still is a general belief in our capacity to influence what is going to happen, discussions on society-nature relations are characterised by a growing awareness of uncertainty about the best way to manage the environment. This is to a great extent attributed to the fact that a holistic view on problems is missing, as for a long-time the solution was sought in ever more specialized knowledge. In order to overcome that, interdisciplinary approaches looking at society-nature relations are discussed. The thesis deals with the possibilities of researching and conceptualising society-nature relations in the Lower River Nyando Basin, Kenya with a focus on floods and agriculture. It is comprised of a short theoretical part, after which the subsequent case study deals with the presentation of the socio-ecological setting and the possibility to reach a holistic examination of the socio-ecological dynamics within a certain area. On-going changes are discussed using the terms risk and resilience. In the theoretical part the difficulties of an interdisciplinary approach are addressed by (a) highlighting the starting points of natural science and social science (this involves among others quantitative versus qualitative science and explaining versus understanding) and by (b) looking at terminology and suggesting a more conscious use of vocabulary in order to improve the way we reason about society-nature relations. The terms risk, vulnerability and resilience are used as examples, as they are prevalent in natural and social science. Concerning (a) it is concluded that we need to reflect on the reasons behind labelling something in a specific way and to discuss why a specific representation is used. Furthermore it is argued that the importance of different perspectives should be acknowledged. Concerning (b)…
abstract: Society-nature relations are regarded as being in crisis; climate change, droughts, floods, environmental degradation have become familiar features in today’s news. While there still is a general belief in our capacity to influence what is going to happen, discussions on society-nature relations are characterised by a growing awareness of uncertainty about the best way to manage the environment. This is to a great extent attributed to the fact that a holistic view on problems is missing, as for a long-time the solution was sought in ever more specialized knowledge. In order to overcome that, interdisciplinary approaches looking at society-nature relations are discussed. The thesis deals with the possibilities of researching and conceptualising society-nature relations in the Lower River Nyando Basin, Kenya with a focus on floods and agriculture. It is comprised of a short theoretical part, after which the subsequent case study deals with the presentation of the socio-ecological setting and the possibility to reach a holistic examination of the socio-ecological dynamics within a certain area. On-going changes are discussed using the terms risk and resilience. In the theoretical part the difficulties of an interdisciplinary approach are addressed by (a) highlighting the starting points of natural science and social science (this involves among others quantitative versus qualitative science and explaining versus understanding) and by (b) looking at terminology and suggesting a more conscious use of vocabulary in order to improve the way we reason about society-nature relations. The terms risk, vulnerability and resilience are used as examples, as they are prevalent in natural and social science. Concerning (a) it is concluded that we need to reflect on the reasons behind labelling something in a specific way and to discuss why a specific representation is used. Furthermore it is argued that the importance of different perspectives should be acknowledged. Concerning (b)…
author: Bloemertz, Lena
date published: 2014-10-10
date modified: 2026-07-27T18:49:40Z
provider: Universität Bayreuth
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Universität Bayreuth