Social Vulnerability and Ecological Fragility: Building Bridges between Social and Natural Sciences Using the Irish Potato Famine as a Case Study
Social Vulnerability and Ecological Fragility: Building Bridges between Social and Natural Sciences Using the Irish Potato Famine as a Case Study
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社会脆弱性和生态脆弱性：以爱尔兰马铃薯饥荒为例，在社会科学和自然科学之间架起桥梁
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发表时间：
2003
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通讯作者：
E. Fraser
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作者：
E. Fraser
1845年至1850年间，一场马铃薯枯萎病引发了一场饥荒，导致25%的爱尔兰人口死亡或流离失所。除了它的历史和文化意义，爱尔兰马铃薯饥荒说明了社会和经济力量如何造成对环境干扰的脆弱性。因此，研究饥荒有助于正在进行的学术辩论的理论结合联合收割机的社会和环境数据。本文运用Sen（1980）的“权利”框架和Gunderson和Holling（2002）提出的“泛政府”模型探讨了导致爱尔兰饥荒的条件。权利理论使我们能够更好地理解随着不同的社会和经济力量消除或限制获得食物的渠道，社区粮食安全如何随着时间的推移而变得脆弱。在爱尔兰，一系列经济、人口和社会压力导致了几十年的饥荒，这意味着爱尔兰农民在马铃薯歉收时没有食物选择。无政府状态提供了一种描述易受破坏的生态系统的方法。饥荒前在爱尔兰发展起来的农业生态系统具有脆弱环境的典型特征：田地靠得很近，生物多样性很低，大量的生物量使这个生态系统对机会性害虫很有吸引力。然而，这两个框架都没有提供适当的方式来审查人类与环境关系的整体。通过将权利与无政府状态相结合，我们可以探索脆弱性的社会和环境特征。应享权利和无政府状态可以通过首先评估社区在多大程度上依赖于自然环境维持生计，以及如果环境发生变化，有哪些选择来结合起来。一旦确定了对环境的依赖性，就必须评估所涉具体生态系统的特点，以确定其易受外部冲击和干扰的脆弱性。泛政府框架使之成为可能。
Between 1845 and 1850, a potato blight triggered a famine that killed or displaced 25% of the Irish population. Aside from its historical and cultural significance, the Irish Potato Famine illustrates how social and economic forces can create vulnerability to environmental disturbance. Therefore, studying the famine contributes to the on-going academic debate on theories to combine social and environmental data. This paper explores the conditions leading to the Irish famine using the "Entitlement" framework of Sen (1980) and the "Panarchy" model proposed by Gunderson and Holling (2002). Entitlement theory allows us to better understand how community food security may become vulnerable over time as different social and economic forces eliminate or restrict avenues to obtain food. In Ireland, a host of economic, demographic, and social pressures marked the decades leading to the famine and meant that the Irish peasantry had no food options when the potato crop failed. Panarchy provides a way of characterizing ecological systems that are vulnerable to disruptions. The agro- ecosystem that developed in Ireland prior to the famine had characteristics typical of vulnerable environments: fields were close together, biodiversity was low, and a large amount of biomass made this ecosystem attractive to opportunistic pests. Neither framework, however, provides an adequate way of examining the totality of human- environmental relations. By combining entitlements with panarchy, we can explore both the social and environmental characteristics of vulnerability. Entitlements and panarchy can be coupled by first assessing the extent to which communities depend on the natural environment for livelihoods, and the options available if the environment changes. Once a dependency on the environment has been ascertained, the characteristics of the specific ecosystems in question must then be assessed to determine their vulnerability to external shocks and disturbances. The panarchy framework makes this possible.