Natural resources and people ;

Part I seeks to outline and discuss the larger his torical, cultural, and institutional context within which work on natural resources has been developed and conducted. Chapter 1, by Kenneth A. Dahlberg, is an exploratory essay which cautions against assuming the universality of current concepts of natural resources by examining the broad changes in the nature and under standing of natural resources between hunting and gath ering, agricultural, and industrial societies. Also, some of the major interactions between institutional specialization and centralization, increasing technolog ical capabilities, and patterns of natural resource use (and abuse) are traced. Chapter 2, by Michael H. Glantz and Maria E. Krenz, employs a model which analytically separates factors operating at the individual, national, and international levels to do a detailed case study describing the social, political, and technological fac tors that have shaped the development and structure of the fisheries industry. While focusing on the Peruvian fishery, they show how it has been affected by both what happened in other fisheries and by the vagaries of El Nino. They thus conclude that traditional natural resource management approaches which stress concepts of maximum sustainable yield and focus on a specific fish ery are not sufficient. International economic and technological trends, as well as national political and bureaucratic factors need to be included.

Parts II, III, and IV seek to provide a series of critical reviews and analyses of the strengths and weak nesses of the main approaches to interdisciplinary research and work. Rather than trying to develop a detailed typology, three broad approaches were identi fied--disciplinary approaches, multidisciplinary prob -oriented approaches, and systems approaches. Each lem-or can be seen to manifest certain holistic and integrative capabilities and conceptions, yet none of them can be said to be fully interdisciplinary. In part, this may be due to the institutional settings with in which they operate arch or te--which clearly mitigate against interdisciplin ary researc work. part, this is also due to the part, itive "maps" with which they work. While particular proaches borrows from the others, the dis each of the ciplines generally explore the larger inte interactions of the problems they are exploring "from the discipline up." That is, they take the traditional academic divi sion of labor as their starting point and then seek to build upon, expand, and reach out from that "slice" of the whole towards a larger understanding. In contrast, there are what we have termed multi disciplinary, problem-oriented approaches. In focus ing upon specific problems (such as desertification or range management) or types of problema (social impact ananas mente), they tend to draw upon data, concepts, and ana lyt le procedures from the various disciplines relevant to their particular problem, they are thun multi-disci plinary. They are, in effect, putting together various disciplinary alices" or pieces to form a mosaic depict ing their problem area. However, unlike a mosaic, the pieces are more like those coming from a number of dif ferent jigsaw puzzles--with each piece having a shape and picture derived from its specific discipline. Thun the resulting "mosaic" will have gaps and holes, as wel as a conflicting mixture of component images. This analogy also helps to illustrate another characteristic of multi-disciplinary approaches: they tend to be more interested in testing their work in and against the real world, rather than employing the extensive theory and model-building of the disciplines.

Systems approaches fall somewhere in between. Examples of two important, but rather different approaches are represented here: general systems theory and ecology. Each reflects a dissatisfaction with dis ciplinary approaches and clearly calls for a radical broadening of our theoretical approaches to understand ing and dealing with natural resource problems. Yet neither really synthesizes either the traditional aca demic fields--the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences--nor the three major constituent parts of natural resource systems--the technological, the environmental, and the social. Thus, while they offer stimulation and hope, their integrative theories and concepts are still largely in outline or prototypic form in terms of full interdisciplinary content; much of the rest--often admixed in curious patterns--still depends upon data and concepts generated by disciplinary or multi-disciplinary approaches. Thus, whatever approach is taken, each of us is left with the frustra tion of being able to see or speak of natural resource systems primarily through the parts. We have concluded that a better understanding of the intellectual and institutional roots of our divisions and separations is a prerequisite to making advances towards more holistic,

integrated, and interdisciplinary research. In Part II we asked each of the authors to reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of their particular disciplines in terms of what they have and have not been able to tell us about natural resource systems, what levels of analysis are most fruitfully applied, what types of phenomena can be most clearly depicted, and so on. We also asked the authors to illustrate their assessments and concerns either by drawing upon case studies in which they have been involved or by integrat ing examples from selected resource management studies. In this way, we sought to include an interaction or dialectic between theory and practice. The disciplines chosen are all from the social sciences. This is both to counterbalance the historic emphasis on the natural sciences in work on natural resources and to illustrate what such approaches and perspectives can add. Thus, in terms of one of the primary needs identified in the ini tial MAB workshop, we have sought to encourage a redefi nition and reconceptualization of resource and ecologi cal systems so as to include human interactions with the environment.