Social sciences and theory practice: a real divide?

It should be obvious to the readers of this blog that I am quite interested in bridging the divide between social science theory and policy. This leads to a lot of confusion about what I will do after graduate school, but for now I'm enjoying my time digging into socio/ecological/technical theories while maintaining focus on policy-relevant issues like climate change and agriculture. In the end, my research questions will likely be a combinations of theoretical and practical questions, though as I progress I will surely find some more interesting than others.

I just read three articles from some international relations blogs that address this issue-- and particularly the role of academics and graduate/early-career training. The field of political science has clearly grappled with this for a while, and it's no wonder why. I often think about how Science and Technology Studies has/will grapple with this, and I have some insights I could share offline should the chance arise. This also raises many normative questions about what academics should be doing, what do we owe society, should policy-makers listen to us, etc.

So here are the articles:

• International Affairs and the Public Sphere, By Stephen M. Walt
• Hanging Out on the Theory-Practice-Policy Divide, By Charli Carpenter
• What Does it Mean to Work Politically in Development? By Seth Kaplan

Also, for your daily LOLs, this.

Agroecological zones and climate

Much of my research on climate change and agriculture over the past year has focused on how innovation-- mostly biological, such as plant breeding, but also technological, such as irrigation-- has expanded the range of certain crops, such as wheat and soybeans in North America. Looking at these historical cases, we might be able to learn something about adaptation of crops to new climate zones due to climate change.

The Consultative Group for International Agriculture (CGIAR) has also picked up on this idea of climate adaptation through crop innovation. This makes perfect sense, given their historical roots in plant breeding, and their access to large repositories of plant genetic material around the world. They have lately focused on bridging gaps between climate modeling, plant breeding, and climate-tolerant crops. For example, if we can predict that the climate in Nepal is going to be similar to Bangladesh in 20 years, then Nepali farmers and plant breeders should be not only learning from their Bangladeshi counterparts, but also starting to grow Bangladeshi varieties of rice.

But Bangladesh alone has about 30 agroecological zones (see figure above). Agroecological zones are based on regional soil types and climate zones. This means that farmers in each zone are likely to differ, even if by just a little, in the type of irrigation they use, variety of crops they grow, and when they plant and harvest those crops. Agroecological zones are also useful in categorizing the maximum yield productivity of a region-- for example, rice just might grow better in certain zones.

Today many crops have mixed genetic heritages that span not just countries but continents, and we can even grow traditional Japanese rice in Australia. If we look back to the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug introduced a variety of wheat to India that was originally bred in Mexico. Borlaug also innovated a plant breeding technique called "shuttle breeding," which is where you test a new crop in two different climate locations. This would make the plant "hardier" and able to survive in a larger climate zone.

The problem lies in reducing agriculture to a simple equation of climate and genetics. The CGIAR is falling a bit too closely into a "Seeing Like a State" mentality. The drive to simplify and cross-apply broad agricultural knowledge across regions ignores many local factors, both biophysical (types of local insects, soil salinity, climate variability) and social (gender roles in farming, innovativeness, access to resources).

I've written about these generalizations of climate vulnerability before, and how such generalized information is likely limited in its use. Climate change is not the only challenge to farmers: in fact, short term climate variability may be more important. Miguel Altieri and other agroecologists argue that local networks of agrobiodiversity and seed sharing are more important than international efforts to improve yields through modernization of agriculture. On the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, an author writes about the problems with using recent online climate-zone tools produced by the CGIAR and FAO.

So despite my skepticism about the usefulness of climate models and technological fixes, I'm extremely excited to work on this issue more in the upcoming year, and especially looking at farmer participation and innovation for climate adaptation in India.

Timothy B. Lee on Innovation

I can across this article on my Twitter feed and thought I would pass it along.

• Two Views of Innovation. Timothy B. Lee gives a nice overview of Schumpeterian and Hayekian innovation. I might be oversimplifying here, but my understanding is that Schumpeter advocated for induced innovation, meaning that macroeconomic factors, such as the prices of core inputs (oil, steel, etc.) "induce" innovation in certain sectors. Hayek's view is much evolutionary; firms use trial-and-error to eventually specialize in something. Lee then goes into an example using intellectual property rights, Apple, and Microsoft.

Lee, writing a blog called "Disruptive Economics" for Forbes, has some interesting thoughts on innovation and technology, so here are a few recent pieces:

• Skyscrapers Are Good for Startups. Similar to Tyler Cowan's Rule #1 for good ethnic food, Lee reflects on why cheap office space is good for innovation.
• Adam Thierer, Infrastructure Socialist. Why Verizon can dig up your lawn.
• Seeing Like a Cable Company. Lee presents a counterfactual history of Comcast, internet bandwidth restrictions, and YouTube; arguing that Comcast suffers from the same design flaws as large development schemes in Scott's Seeing Like a State.

Finally, on the topic of adoption of innovations, this article on what technologies get adopted in pro cycling is pretty interesting: "If it's so good, why don't the pros use it?" And then read the comments for a whole bunch of bicycle-related technical arguments :)

Future Tense event re-cap

Yesterday I caught a bit of the Future Tense event, "How to Save America’s Knowledge Enterprise" which was a 5 1/2 hour seminar webcast from DC. Future Tense is a collaboration between Slate magazine, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University (more specifically, the Consortium for Science, Policy, & Outcomes, who I'm loosely affiliated with).

I would recommend watching parts of the actual video, especially if there are topics of specific interest to you. From the parts I watched, the panel discussions and responses to questions were the most interesting. Much of the discussion was around what and how the government should fund science, which is obviously the essence of science policy. The panelists really grappled with contradictions over basic and applied research, funding long-shots vs. incremental improvements, and citizen participation/education/understanding in/of science. So since I can't think of much else to say right now, here are three related links.

• Forget About the Mythical Lone Inventor in the Garage (Slate). I linked to this yesterday, but its worth re-sharing.
• Can We Save America's R&D System? A Future Tense Event (Slate). A brief recap of the event.
• How Thomas Edison, Mark Zuckerberg and Iron Man are holding back American innovation (Washington Post). Anything that compares Iron Man to science & technology policy has already won me over. I recently watched the Avengers and Iron Man 2, and couldn't help but think about the military-industrial-complex and technology assessments (esp. in Iron Man 2!).