Understanding Economic/Livelihood Diversity in Modern Socio-Environmental Systems

Abstract

A defining characteristic of socio-environmental systems, meaning linked systems of human communities and their environmental contexts, is the diversity of their economic or livelihood base. Members of an agrarian community can, for example, grow one strain of corn, multiple strains of corn, or some mix of corn, beans, and peaches. The community could also supplement traditional crop income with income from other activities, such as work in a nearby factory or with cash inputs from community members living elsewhere, such as in major cities. I will review insights and case studies from economics, geography, anthropology, and ecology about economic diversity and discuss a simple conceptual framework for considering how economic reward and risk and social connectedness might affect these diversity patterns in a globalizing world.

Presenters

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William Burnside

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. William (Bill) Burnside is an independent scholar and a Senior Editor at Nature Sustainability.  Before joining the journal, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at SESYNC, working on macroecological approaches to sustainability science. Bill majored in Human Biology at Stanford University and holds an MS in Natural Resources & Environment from the University of Michigan. His PhD, in biology from the University of New Mexico, focused on the metabolic basis of large-scale ecological patterns and processes, including of humans. Much of this work has been interdisciplinary and has involved...

Image

William Burnside

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. William (Bill) Burnside is an independent scholar and a Senior Editor at Nature Sustainability.  Before joining the journal, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at SESYNC, working on macroecological approaches to sustainability science. Bill majored in Human Biology at Stanford University and holds an MS in Natural Resources & Environment from the University of Michigan. His PhD, in biology from the University of New Mexico, focused on the metabolic basis of large-scale ecological patterns and processes, including of humans. Much of this work has been interdisciplinary and has involved collaborations with environmental social scientists, anthropologists, and computer scientists. He is co-editor of Foundations of Socio-Environmental Research: Legacy Readings with Commentaries, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, an anthology he started at SESYNC and that the Center has continued to support.

External Links:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uajiA-oAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/about/editors

Date
Time
12:30 p.m. ET
Location
SESYNC – 1 Park Place, Suite 300, Annapolis, MD
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