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Time, Cycles and Tempos inSocial-ecological Research and

Environmental Policy

Charles H. Wood

ABSTRACT. The execution of successful social-ecological researchand the formulation of effective environmental policies cruciallydepend on a deep knowledge of the temporal complexity of theinteractions between social and biophysical systems. To promote akeener awareness of the relevance of time, cycles, and tempos, thisstudy assembles examples drawn from a range of disciplines to

delineate the ways temporality enters into human behavior, resourcemanagement, and the conduct of social-ecological research. Anthro-pological and historical studies document the culturally embeddedtemporal subjectivities that shape the way humans exploit orconserve natural resources. Analyses of environmental policy showhow temporal considerations enter into intervention strategies viasuch concepts as discount rates, property rights and the precautionaryprinciple. The centrality of temporal assumptions is further evi-denced by the time-dependent foundations of disciplinary specializa-tions. The likelihood of temporal mismatches between the

specializations that participate in interdisciplinary research andbetween the scientific findings and environmental policy can bemitigated by giving attention to temporal grain, temporal fallacy andtemporal extent. KEY WORDS environment; hierarchy; interdisci-plinary; precautionary principle; social-ecological system; temporalextent; temporal fallacy; temporal grain

Time & Society copyright © 2008 SAGE (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)VOL. 17 No. 2/3 (2008), pp. 261–282 0961-463X DOI: 10.1177/0961463X08093425

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sequent discussion that notes how temporal considerations enter into the formu-

lation of environmental policy via such concepts as the discount rate, property

rights and the precautionary principle. The third section delves more deeply into

the centrality of temporal assumptions by showing that disciplinary specializa-

tions in the social and natural sciences are largely predicated on a preferred levelof analysis and associated time-dependent theories, concepts and instruments.

Cognizance of these fundamental differences is vital to interdisciplinary

research agendas, as summarized in the conclusion.

Subjective Time, Human Behavior and the Environment

Anthropologists’ attention to culturally embedded notions of time has produced

a wealth of data that amply document the variability in the perception and treat-

ment of time among societies (e.g. Nilsson, 1920; Evans-Pritchard, 1940; Gell,

1992). Typical of this approach are studies that show how temporal subjectivi-

ties and durational expectations in non-western cultures are often tuned to the

cycles of nature and to the rhythms of social practices and economic activities.

An example in this classic tradition is Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) ethnography of

the Nuer of Africa, a society of pastoralists who calibrate the time of day and of

the passage of time mainly in relation to the round of tasks involved in tending

to cattle. Thus conceived, time is treated as process-linked rather than somethingabstract and transcendent. Taking his cue from Durkeim’s Elementary Forms of

the Religious Life (1915/1964) , Evans-Pritchard – along with virtually all con-

temporary anthropologists of time – rejected the notion of time as an immutable

and external fact in favor of a perspective that treated time as a ‘social construc-

tion’, something that human beings create in the course of their material

existence (Gell, 1992: 4).

The relevance of subjective time to the environment is illustrated by Oren

Lyons’s (1980) study of the Iroquois who share a worldview that compels them

to make decisions in a manner that institutionalizes the future into their presentchoices. Jeremy Rifkin (1987) cites an interview Lyons carried out with an

Iroquois chief, who explained: ‘We are looking ahead . . . to make sure that

every decision we make relates to the welfare and well-being of the seventh

generation to come’ (p. 78). The Iroquois thus appear to have long embraced the

principles of sustainable development as the form of development that does not

‘compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED,

1987: 43).

Other ethnographies show how backward-looking creation myths can simi-

larly promote a conservation ethic (see Peterson, 2001). Among the Koyukonwho live in the north-western interior of Alaska, creation narratives look to the

‘distant time’ when animals were human, lived in human society and spoke

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human language (Peterson, 2001: 104). The oral history of tribal origins instills

among the Koyukon a conservation view that endorses restraint, humility and

respect for the world of nature.

Group-held conceptions of time can just as easily undermine the resilience

societies display as they contend with external threats and environmental chal-lenges. Among the Aztecs, it was a deep commitment to time as a cyclical

phenomenon that disposed Moctezuma, at least in the beginning, to see the

Spaniards not as a threat from the outside but as god-spirits who heralded the

end of one cosmic period and the commencement of another (Paz, 1985).

Emboldened by Moctezuma’s indecisiveness, Cortes marched his small band of

warriors into Tenochtitlán and changed the world forever (Chasteen, 2001).

Sanguine interpretations of Iroquois and Koyukon culture may well reflect

the much-criticized tendency to romanticize the ‘ecologically noble savage’,

thus eliding the uncomfortable findings of studies that have documented manyinstances in which indigenous peoples are known to have over-exploited natural

resources (Redford, 1991; Krech, 1999). In a similar manner, social and natural

scientists alike are rightly wary of ‘just so’ stories wherein the existence of an

observed phenomenon is explained by its adaptive function. ‘Just so’ reasoning

was the premise of Rudyard Kipling’s whimsical children’s stories, published in

1902, about the origins of curiosities like the leopard’s spots and the camel’s

hump. As with Kipling’s stories, but in a more serious vein, Lyons’s (1980)

account of the Iroquois, like the ecological interpretation of Koyukon culture,

may be overly tendentious. Conclusions from a wealth of data are nonetheless

consistent with the notion that the temporal orientations of indigenous societies

often promote cultural traditions that preserve native species and natural

resources in the course of protecting human subsistence (Peterson, 2001).

Rifkin (1987) was quick to note the striking contrast between the expanded

time horizon invoked by the Iroquois and the shortened lens of modern political

leaders whose ‘concept of decision-making responsibility barely extends

beyond the four-year period that marks off each new general election’ (p. 79).

Because the consequences of decisions made today will be experienced bypresent generations and by generations to come, futures are being constructed

and foreclosed with political tools that are unresponsive to citizens who live

beyond the temporal boundaries of the deciding government’s term of office. A

conspicuous example is the decision to construct a nuclear power station. The

mere four- to five-year time horizon of a government’s accountability is insuffi-

cient to cover the plant’s building phase, let alone its period of decommission-

ing, and even less the time span of radioactive materials (Adam, 1998).

Like the cultures of which they are a part, temporal orientations are subject to

historical change, often in ways that reflect fundamental shifts in how peopleinteract with nature. A well-known treatment of the time–nature–history rela-

tionship appears in E. P. Thompson’s (1967) influential essay on the demise of

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feudalism. In that text, Thompson documented how people’s temporal reckon-

ing once based on the agricultural calendar was supplanted by notions of time

dictated by industrial capitalism. Intimately tied to Newtonian physics and to

assumptions about linear causality, irreversibility and objectivity, the new

temporal foundation ‘constitutes the deep structure of the taken-for-grantedknowledge associated with the industrial way of life’ based on notions of cer-

tainty and control (Adam, 1998: 97). Divorced from the periodicities of nature,

our clocks and schedules allow us to impose science and technology on the

tempos of the biological, physical and social worlds.1 As the steam whistle

replaced the tolling of church bells that once signaled the hours of work and

prayer, the associated values and ideologies, driven by the imperatives of capi-

tal accumulation in competitive global markets, increasingly promote and

reward short time horizons and the immediate exploitation of nature in ways

profoundly antithetical to long-term conservation. If the implied dichotomybetween ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ time orientations is often overstated as

critics have argued (Adam, 1995; Bluedorn, 2002), the transition to industrial

capitalism has clearly reorganized the cognitive and material bases of the inter-

actions between humans and the natural environment.

Indifference to the long term may have received an unintentional boost in

recent years from the growing popularity of some evangelical Christian views

that endorse the finite quantity of remaining time before the return of the

Messiah. The attitude is especially manifest among those who endorse the

‘Rapture credo’ vividly expressed in the best-selling Left Behind book series

authored by Tim LaHaye. When droughts, floods and ecological collapse are

treated as harbingers of an imminent, inevitable and even desirable apocalypse,

conservationists like David Orr (2005) and E. O. Wilson (2006) note that people

are not inclined to overly worry about the future state of the environment. In

David Orr’s (2005) view, the apocalyptic tendencies of evangelical theology

make believers complacent and therefore complicit to environmental degrada-

tion. The argument is sufficiently troubling to conservationists that it is the basis

of the first chapter in E. O. Wilson’s book, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Lifeon Earth (2006), in which Wilson, in an ‘Open Letter to a Southern Baptist

Minister’, concludes that the widespread conviction that the Second Coming is

imminent and that the Earth is therefore doomed is a gospel that plays down our

responsibility to conserve nature.

Evangelical Christians are not of one mind on the matter, as is clear in the

exchanges published in the pages of Conservation Biology, a leading journal in

the field of environmental studies (Cobb, 2005; Henderson, 2005; Orr, 2005;

Stuart, 2005). Responding to Orr’s less than flattering picture of evangelical

Christianity, one contributor (Van Dyke, 2005) noted that there are more than 40evangelical organizations that explicitly include environmental conservation in

their mission statements. Competing perspectives in this discussion are unlikely




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to be reconciled any time soon. Still, the debate and the other examples noted in

here underscore the broader idea that subjective perceptions of time have conse-

quences for the environment and that temporal orientations are mutable and sub-

ject to historical forces in ways that both reflect and produce fundamental shifts

in how people interact with nature.

Temporal Foundations of Environmental Policy

Environmental policies that seek to alter the trade-off between current con-

sumption and future welfare explicitly rely on the behavioral consequences of

subjective temporal orientation. Temporal dimensions enter into the formulation

of environmental policy via concepts such as discount rates, property rights and

the precautionary principle.

Social and political discount rates

Discounting is a key component of cost-benefit analysis, a procedure that

requires that future benefits be expressed in monetary form. Discounting is

based on the principle that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the

future. Investors and policy makers therefore assess the current value of a future

sum of money or a future benefit to society by depreciating its value backwardsin time. In the realm of environmental policy, both the costs and benefits of a

project are discounted. The difference between the two yields the ‘net present

value’ (NPV) of a particular initiative, a figure that provides the basis for policy

decisions. If the NPV has a positive sign, then benefits exceed costs and adop-

tion of the policy is encouraged. If the sign is negative, costs exceed benefits and

the NPV counsels against adoption (Farber and Hemmersbaugh, 1993).

Discounting is controversial because no agreement exists as to the correct dis-

count rate. More generally, discounting can seem to give insufficient weight to

future benefits. With the passage of sufficient time, the future is rendered worth-less regardless of the discount rate (Adam, 1998). Critics thus contend that dis-

counting reduces even large benefits to present values that are insignificant

(Farber and Hemmersbaugh, 1993). Others counter that when discounting is

judiciously applied and thoughtfully interpreted, the method provides indispens-

able information to make sound choices (Goulder and Stavins, 2002).

The trade-off between the present and the future, enshrined in the discount

rate, suggests a form of reasoning that has been applied to the political arena,

albeit in less formal terms. In the political context it appears that the greater the

elapsed time between today’s decision and its manifest consequences, the lessfuture consequences count in present considerations (Adam, 1998). In this sense

we can speak of a ‘political discount rate’ to refer to the present political value




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of the future benefits of a given action. In an institutional and historical context

in which security in office is unpredictable, the rational ruler will forgo invest-

ments whose benefits he or she may not survive long enough to reap. ‘The more

doubtful the outcome, the higher the relative value of alternative activities that

yield immediate dividends, even if the expected return of those activities is low’(Goldsmith, 2004). The principle has been used to explain the highly predatory

style of political rule often seen in African countries (Goldsmith, 2004) and can

be easily extended to address the politics of environmental regulation.

Uncertain futures, property rights and land degradation

Whether couched in social or political terms, discounting provides one basis for

conceptualizing the relationship between present and future. Other approaches

to understanding inter-temporal choices have been applied to a broad range of phenomena. In the case of land resources, the manner in which the future insin-

uates itself into present is evident in the way property rights, land titles and

tenure security influence the likelihood that people will take steps to conserve

land.

In the case of agricultural land, it is the rate of degradation relative to the pace

of regeneration that decides the effectiveness of conservation strategies.

Because the quantity of land available for agriculture took millions of years to

form, it can, from the human temporal perspective, be treated as a fixed supply,

a non-renewable resource. Even so, agricultural land has a regenerative capacity

and can be made continuously productive with investment, maintenance and the

replacement of nutrients. Effective land management occurs when the rate of

regeneration keeps pace with the degenerative consequences of agricultural use

(Wachter, 1992). Whether land is a non-renewable (stock) or a renewable (flow)

resource is therefore contingent not only on the technologies applied to the

management of land but also on the time-frame invoked.

The likelihood that land managers will engage in long-term investment, and the

probability that they will defer the immediate exploitation of natural capital in theinterest of long-term conservation, is enhanced when people can be sure that at

some point in the future they can reap the benefits of present investment and con-

servation (Wachter, 1992). Confidence in the ability to claim ownership over

future outputs is promoted via the official, but sometimes informal, establishment

of clear and enforced property rights. In rural areas this usually takes the form of

land titles, the provision of which is assumed to create a predictable future and

thereby improve the stewardship of land and natural resources (Alchian and

Demsetz, 1973; Feder, 1987; Larson and Bromley, 1990; Beaumont and Walker,

1994).The predictability of the future and the degree to which people have confi-

dence in their hold over land are cognitive orientations that are influenced by




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economic and political contexts, as was readily seen in frontier regions of the

Brazilian Amazon (Schmink and Wood, 1992). Poor migrants who initially

trekked into the lowland tropics during the 1970s and 1980s were acutely aware

of their tenuous hold over land and their vulnerability to more powerful ranchers

intent on converting forest to pasture. Under the circumstances, smallholdersfound that their only option was to deforest with the explicit expectation of sell-

ing their ‘improvements’ to the land as quickly as possible, then move on to

repeat the cycle further down the road. The result was a process of rapid and

extensive deforestation unrelated to the agricultural potential of the land. When

settlement areas on the frontier became more consolidated and when the tran-

sience that marked the early days gave way to more secure land tenure and to the

possibility of longer time horizons, the stage was set for collective action on the

part of individuals and communities to resist dispossession and to invest in land.

Changing subjective assessments of the future thus played a significant role inpromoting social mobilization and encouraging the adoption of less predator

forms of land use.2

A variation in the analyses of the behavioral consequences of temporal orien-

tations comes from Bryan Roberts’ (1995) use of Robert Merton’s (1984) con-

cept of ‘socially expected durations’. Roberts invoked the concept to explain the

fate of different immigrant groups to the United States (US). In a manner simi-

lar to the studies that noted the land use consequences of short time horizons

among migrants to the Brazilian Amazon, Roberts found that group differences

in the probability of becoming a naturalized citizens, the likelihood of buying a

home and the probability of investing in a business could be explained by

whether immigrants thought of their presence in the US as transient or perma-

nent.

We can conclude from these observations that microeconomic explanations

based on discount rates, as well as numerous other explanations of the human

causes of environmental degradation, including predictions derived from the

property rights paradigm, are special cases of the behavioral consequences of

subjective temporalities. The idea that culturally embedded temporal notionsand socially expected durations can exert a significant influence on behavior of

individuals and social groups further points to a connection, largely implicit,

between subjective perceptions of time and leading issues within the social and

environmental sciences. As the various examples suggest, group-held ideas of

time and the transitory or permanent character of people’s perception of their

present situation can affect the likelihood of social movements (see Foweraker,

1995), the development of ‘social capital’ as a development resource (Putnam,

1993; Portes, 1998), the degradation of the natural environment (Wachter, 1992)

and the feasibility of community-based conservation efforts (e.g. Agrawal,1997).




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Future damages and present caution

Assessments of the future damages caused by present action and attempts to

mediate inter-temporal costs and benefits through environmental policies are

especially difficult to formulate when the effects are drawn out over longperiods of time and when the processes involved are marked by contingencies,

time lags and periods of invisibility. Global warming comes to mind as does

damage to the ozone layer and the extra skin cancers created by the higher levels

of ultraviolet radiation penetrating a normally protective ozone layer. Additional

examples include the health consequences of genetically modified organisms,

the manifestation of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle (‘mad

cow’ disease) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and mesothe-

lioma caused by the inhalation of asbestos dust.

The uncertain outcome of present actions has prompted some to insist oncaution first, science second. Although there is no agreed definition of the idea,

the concept is often labeled the ‘precautionary principle’. The principle is

invoked when ‘there is a need to act to reduce potential hazard before there is

strong proof of harm, taking into account the likely costs and benefits of action

and inaction’ (Harremöes et al., 2002: 4). Ardent advocates of precaution

contend, for example, that governments should immediately ban the planting of

genetically modified crops even though science cannot produce definitive evi-

dence that they are a danger to the environment or to consumers. The precau-

tionary principle shifts the burden of proof by ‘requiring those who would

intervene in the environment to demonstrate that their interventions will not

cause harm’ (Lee, 1993: 173). Skeptics counter that adopting the principle will

stifle trade and limit innovation. ‘If someone had evaluated the risk of fire right

after it was invented,’ remarked Julian Morris at a conference on the precau-

tionary principle, ‘they may well have decided to eat their food raw’ (cited in

Appell, 2001: 18).

Introducing long-term considerations into present choices is particularly diffi-

cult when a proposed action threatens the privileges or profits of powerful inter-ests, when the environmental or health consequences are far in the future, and

when the real or perceived costs of action are large and immediate. Precaution-

ary policies are further vulnerable to the very culture of the scientific enterprise

that militates against anticipatory action. In the absence of strong evidence,

experts habitually express scientific results with utmost prudence. Caution is

formally enshrined in the fear of committing a Type I error – rejecting a null

hypothesis that in fact is true. The colloquial expression for a scientist’s trepida-

tion is a strong penchant to endorse the principle of ‘presumed innocent until

proven guilty’.In most cases, avoiding Type I errors is desirable, but not in all. Firefighters

who receive notice of a blaze in a wooden building and police who receive a tip




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about an abandoned package in a public place respond with dispatch, as though

the fire were actually burning and a real bomb ticking. The high cost of not taking

immediate action means ignoring the danger of committing a Type II error –

accepting the null hypothesis when it is actually false. If the fire turns out to be a

hoax and the bomb a fake, so be it – ‘better safe than sorry’, as the saying goes.A strict aversion to Type I errors endorses a logic that waits for clear evidence

of harm before taking action – ‘presumed innocent’ trumps ‘better safe than

sorry’. The problem is that decades may pass before reliable data become avail-

able. By then the damages inflicted on the environment may be irreversible.

Faced with this dilemma, Kai Lee (1993) has usefully suggested that we should

be prepared to recognize those circumstances in which Type I errors are to be

avoided and situations in which Type II errors are a problem: ‘Their differences

in logic suggest that it might be possible to sort out situations and to design insti-

tutions to apply the appropriate burden of proof’ (p. 75).

The Treatment of Time in Social and Environmental Research

Sensitivity to the inter-temporal implications of Type I and Type II errors

clarifies key aspects of the relationship between the conduct of science and the

enactment of environmental policies. However, limiting discussion to hypothe-

sis testing focuses only on the mechanics of the scientific enterprise andtherefore overlooks the potential consequences associated with the temporal

underpinnings of disciplinary specializations. At a more underlying level, it is

evident that the very logic of the theoretical models that drive the scientific

process can, by virtue of their temporal premises, incorporate or neglect critical

considerations. An example is the equilibrium model at the core of neoclassical

economics, a framework that occupies center stage in the field of environmental

economics.

Temporal foundations of models, theories and disciplines

In the equilibrium model, time must pass for competitive markets to clear

obstructions ‘in the long run’. But the model itself is timeless in that it does not

pretend to represent changes in the relationships between variables over time.

Such changes are treated as disturbances in the ceteris paribus assumptionssurrounding the model as an ‘ideally isolated system,’ not as features of reality tobe described by the model itself. (Gell, 1992: 176)

Historical contingencies that produce results at variance with the predictions of the abstract model tend to be relegated to the category of transitory disturbances

on the road to an as yet unrealized equilibrium state.




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The theoretical (and surely political) utility of a ‘timeless’ horizon is not

limited to neoclassical economists. Analysts in the Marxist-Althusserian tradi-

tion, in their attempt to secure the materialist framework in the face of contra-

dictory observations, are fond of asserting that, despite short-term anomalies,

the economic is determinant in the last instance (see Roxborough, 1979).Ironically, the timeless long run in neoclassical equilibrium models becomes the

timeless last instance in neo-Marxian historical materialism. Faced with evi-

dence that contradicts theorized expectations, what remains standing is the con-

ceptual framework rescued by the invocation of the last instance (or the long

run) – a mythical future when all shall be revealed. In the meantime, all manner

of environmental degradation may have occurred and countless species may

have been lost forever.

The broader point is that the theoretical models that comprise different

specializations vary with respect to the manner and the degree to which they payovert attention to temporality (Wood, 2005). Some fields owe their very exist-

ence to the discovery of a new temporal horizon as in the case of geology, the

development of which was entirely contingent on the discovery of ‘deep time’

(McPhee, 1980). Prior to Lyell’s Principles of Geology in 1830, the earth

sciences were cramped by the temporal compression imposed by the biblical

chronology. It was only with the postulation of deep time – which envisioned a

nearly incomprehensible temporal immensity measured in thousands of millions

of years – that geologists were conceptually positioned to interpret the slow and

steady operation of erosion and other ordinary processes as the cause of such

geologic marvels as the Grand Canyon (Gould, 1987).

The temporal specificity of disciplinary specializations is further illustrated

by the distinctions biologists make between molecules, cells and tissues, and the

observation that each analytical focus gives rise, respectively, to the specialized

fields of molecular biology, cytology and histology. Each field poses different

questions, the answers to which rely on level and temporally specific theories

and methods. In this way, the models and methods that distinguish one disci-

pline from another implicitly channel its practitioners into largely pre-determined levels of analysis (Gibson et al., 2000) and, as a result, instill in them

an associated temporal horizon.

Because every specialization has a preferred object of inquiry that is asso-

ciated with a particular level of analysis and temporal horizon, disciplines

typically periodize events in very different terms. Meteorologists observe oscil-

lations in temperature and precipitation that take place at virtually any scale, yet

the distinctions they draw between ‘microclimate’, ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ con-

note phenomena that are witnessed over increasingly larger areas and longer

time spans (Urban et al., 1987). Historians speak of eras, epochs and stages.Economists concerned with prices and production talk of fluctuations that are of

varying length or, as in Kondratiev’s (1925) classic study, of cycles that endure




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half a century. In common parlance, people refer to the short, medium and long

term, conveniently leaving aside the precise length of time each expression

invokes.3 The spans of time that depict a given periodization scheme thus make

sense only with respect to some prior conceptualization of the process at hand.

The idea that treatments of time are entirely constructed by a theory, concep-tualization or instrumentation within a scientific discipline has profound impli-

cations for interdisciplinary research. As anyone who has attempted to design an

integrative study can readily attest, establishing effective trans-disciplinary

communication between experts in different fields is burdened by theories that

are incompatible, concepts that have different meanings and methods based on

different techniques. Less palpable but potentially more pernicious divergences

stem from the largely implicit temporal bases of competing approaches. A con-

versation between, say, a wildlife ecologist, a forester and a political scientist is

therefore likely to be derailed not only by their disparate vocabularies but alsothe fact that the languages spoken by the various participants, like their respec-

tive orientations to the object of study, are implicitly grounded on conceptual

clocks that tick at different paces. The frequent result is a temporal mismatch

between the theories, methods and instruments used by various disciplines

involved in an integrated study. Mismatches similarly occur between the tempo-

ral boundaries of conclusions derived from scientific analyses, the formulation

of intervention initiatives and the time horizons of the institutions charged to

implement environmental policy (Cumming et al., 2006).

Temporal hierarchies in ecological systems

The conscious treatment of time and scale is present in many fields but is

notably advanced in landscape ecology among researchers who developed ‘hier-

archy theory’ to analyze complex systems (Allen and Starr, 1982; Ahl and

Allen, 1996). Hierarchy theory is worth noting in the present context because the

conceptual approach makes explicit a number of pertinent issues, especially the

relationship between temporal frequencies and spatial scale.In hierarchy theory, a system is deemed ‘complex’ when it is composed of

observable and relatively stable sub-units that are unified by a super-ordinate

relation.4 Different controls and processes tend to dominate in distinctive levels

of time and space (Wu, 1999). Each level is governed by level-specific pro-

cesses and temporal frequencies, the causal logic of which cannot be formulated

in the languages appropriate to the lower or higher levels in the system. Hence,

observations made at a single level – a strategy common to most research

designs – capture only those patterns and processes pertinent to that tier in the

system. Complexity arises when explanations simultaneously invoke multiplelevels of organization and address the cross-scale dynamics by which variables

and processes at one level are influenced by those at another.




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Examples of complex hierarchical systems include studies of the Arctic

tundra in which the lowest level in the hierarchy, and the smallest spatial unit, is

the individual plant. At a coarser grain, plants compose relatively homogeneous

patches. Multiple patches, in turn, compose a landscape (Wu and David, 2002).

The processes characteristic of each level (plant, patch, landscape) functionaccording to different types of causation, spatial extents and temporal frequen-

cies. The processes that occur at higher levels in the system operate over larger

areas and at slower temporal frequencies, defined as the amount of time it

takes for a cycle to be completed and begin anew (Ahl and Allen, 1996). At

lower levels in the system, the processes operate over small areas and at rapid

temporal frequencies. The properties observed at a higher level in the hierarchy

operate so slowly that they can be considered constant, at least for analyses

cast at lower levels of the system. By the same token, the rapid frequency of

processes that occur at the lowest levels of the system represent little morethan background noise relative to higher tiers of interest. In this way, the

framework recognizes levels of interacting forces so that ‘variables that

appear to be drivers at one scale may seem constant at another’ (Turner et al.,

1995: 29).

Decades of research on regional ecosystems finds that it is the interaction of

slow and fast processes that establishes key features of ecosystem structure

(Holling et al., 2002). Geophysical controls dominate at scales larger than 10

kilometers. At smaller scales, biotic and abiotic processes control the structure,

volume and pattern of vegetation (Holling et al., 2002). The arenas within which

plant and animal-controlling interactions unfold are the same arenas in which

human activities interact with the landscape (Holling et al., 2002). Terrestrial

ecosystems are therefore linked at critical levels to social systems, which are

themselves multileveled and complex.

Temporal hierarchies in social systems

Hierarchical reasoning is generally less developed in analyses of social systems,although historians such as Fernand Braudel (1949/1985) and Charles Tilly

(1984) have made good use of the approach. In his magisterial The Mediter-

ranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip the Second

(1949/1985), Braudel differentiated between la longue durée, conjunctures and

événements. The first is an inquiry into almost changeless ecological history, ‘a

history that goes on, tenaciously, as though it were somehow beyond time’s

reach and ravage’ (Braudel, 1980: 12). Conjunctures concern the tidal move-

ments of history that depict the rise and fall of civilizations and the gentler

rhythms of changing social structures. The third level concerns the activities of individual people that are attuned to the ‘short and nervous’ vibrations of daily

life. For Braudel, the third level of micro-history is only ‘a surface disturbance,




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the waves stirred up by the powerful movement of the tides that run at a deeper

and slower pace’ (Braudel, 1980: 74).

Braudel did not spell out a method for linking one temporal/organizational

level to another (Tilly, 1984). A more successful attempt can be found in Tamara

Hareven’s (1982) book, Family Time and Industrial Time, in which the authoruses life-course analysis to understand how the relatively slow cadence of capi-

talism – manifest in the rise and fall of profits, employment and technology – con-

ditions the faster rhythms of family cycles and individual behavior. A notable

advantage of a multileveled framework – be it the Braudel/Hareven approach in

social history or hierarchy theory in ecology – is to compel a sensitivity to the

varying spatial and temporal levels that comprise the social and the biophysical

systems.

The conceptual and methodological tools for addressing multileveled tempo-

ralities nonetheless remain largely undeveloped. This limitation is particularlydetrimental to environmental research that treats the social and biophysical

domains as components of a single social-ecological system. The daunting com-

plexity of the social-ecological approach makes the need for conceptual clarity

imperative, especially as it concerns the interaction of the social and biophysical

systems across and between different levels of space and time (Wood, 2005). In

the face of such complexity, the concepts that geographers use to depict spatial

properties suggest temporal analogs that can be usefully invoked to identify

potential temporal inconsistencies when multiple specializations are brought

together in integrative social-ecological research.

Temporal analogs to spatial properties

As used by geographers and landscape ecologists, grain (or resolution) refers to

the finest level of spatial resolution possible within a given data set (Turner et

al., 2001). Grain establishes the threshold between the smallest things captured

and those that slip unrecorded through the net of observation (Ahl and Allen,

1996). By the same token, ‘temporal grain’ is the shortest span of time that isrendered meaningful within a given theory, framework or instrumentation.

The significance of temporal grain becomes evident in studies which find that

conclusions based on data generated by instruments sensitive to phenomena that

operate at slow frequencies may differ significantly from conclusions based on

instruments sensitive to phenomena that operate at rapid frequencies. The

problem is analogous to research by geographers on the ‘Modifiable Aerial Unit

Problem’ which found that the conclusions reached at one spatial level change

significantly when the same analysis is performed over different spatial parti-

tions (Openshaw, 1984). Every change in spatial resolution brings forth anew problem and there is no basis for assuming that associations existing at one

scale will also exist at another (McCarty et al., 1956). The modifiable unit




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problem would apply, by analogy, to studies carried out at varying temporal

grains.

The idea that conclusions based on data with a large temporal grain may

change when analysis is performed on data with a smaller temporal grain further

suggests the notion of a ‘temporal fallacy’, a concept akin to the ecologicalfallacy first noted by Warren Robinson in 1950. In his study of counties in the

US, Robinson found that the high correlation between the proportion of the

population that was African-American and the proportion that was illiterate

(aggregate-level association) did not mean that Blacks were more likely to be

illiterate (individual-level association), only that illiterate members of both races

tended to live in the same counties. The analogous temporal fallacy of imputing

relationships based on coarse temporal grains to relationships at finer temporal

grains is only beginning to be appreciated.

The temporal equivalent of geographers’ notion of ‘spatial extent’, the size of the overall study area, is the ‘temporal extent’, the length of time encompassed

by a given project. A study of the relationship between phytoplankton and zoo-

plankton abundance in lakes demonstrated the effect of changing a study’s tem-

poral extent (Carpenter and Kitchell, 1987). Analyses based on a three-day

sampling frequency found a negative correlation between algal production and

zooplankton biomass but the correlation was positive when a six-day sampling

frequency was used. A broadened temporal extent can thus lead to different

conclusions when processes or outcomes become manifest only after a longer

period of time, as is often the case with biophysical phenomena.

Lobbying for longer temporal extents

Temporal mismatches occur when analyses of slow-paced biophysical pro-

cesses are based on research designs that rely on time horizons too short to

produce meaningful results (Tilman, 1989; Risser, 1991). An assessment of eco-

logical research in the 1980s found that small spatial and short temporal extents

characterized much of the literature in the field (Wu, 1999). About half of theexperiments published in Ecology were conducted on plots less than a meter in

diameter (Kareiva and Andersen, 1986) and only 7 per cent of experiments were

conducted on a timescale greater than five years (Tilman, 1989). The penchant

for short-term and cross-sectional analyses has also been of concern in the social

sciences, especially among macro-sociologists in the Marxian tradition who

lament the temporal myopia common to contemporary social research (York

and Clark, 2006). Still, concern about short temporal horizons, when it is

expressed at all, occurs mainly at the margin of core debates.

More recent literature in ecology and in the earth sciences indicates a greaterprevalence of studies with wider spatial extents and longer temporal horizons

(e.g. Redman and Kinzig, 2003; Trosper, 2003).The priority given to long-term




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social-ecological research is endorsed by prestigious institutions, including the

National Science Foundation and its support of the Long-Term Ecological

Research (LTER) Network (Redman et al., 2004). In the pages of Conservation

Ecology, Gunderson and Folke (2003) similarly promote a ‘science of the long

view’ which advocates research projects that encompass broad spatial areas andtemporal horizons ranging from centuries to millennia as a means to understand

how coupled social-ecological systems operate. These initiatives strive to

establish a temporal alignment between the pace of ecological change and the

temporal extent of scientific observation and interpretation.

An inspired if quirky plea for a keener appreciation of longer time horizons

comes from contemporary visionaries who have seized upon the clock itself as a

metaphor to reorient people’s temporal thinking to a ‘slower/better’ pace.

Stewart Brand (1999), board member of The Long Now Foundation, known to

many as the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, contends that the goal is todesign a clock that ticks once a year for 10,000 years, gongs once a century and

cuckoos once a millennium. A working eight-foot high prototype of the ‘Clock

of the Long Now’ is on display at the Science Museum of London.5 The device

will be accompanied by a library that specializes in charting trends that may be

too slow to notice but transform the environment in the long run. By encourag-

ing long-range planning and thinking, the clock and the library project have

caught the eye of leading ecologists (e.g. Holling, 2001) who find themselves

frustrated by the same short time horizons that The Long Now Foundation

strives to combat.

Summary and Conclusion

The goal of developing an integrative approach that treats society and nature as

elements of a single complex system is a major challenge facing contemporary

environmental research. The observations and analyses presented here suggest

that the process of advancing an integrated social-ecological perspectivecrucially depends on a keen appreciation of the temporal complexities that shape

the interactions between social and biophysical systems. This study assembled

examples from a broad range of disciplines to illustrate the varied ways that

temporal considerations enter into human behavior, the construction of environ-

mental policy and the conduct of interdisciplinary research.

The idea that culturally embedded temporal orientations influence the way

people exploit, manage or conserve natural resources has been firmly docu-

mented by anthropological research. Analyses have further shown that subjec-

tive temporalities are influenced by historical forces in ways that both reflectand produce fundamental shifts in how people interact with nature. Attempts to

influence the relationship between present action and future consequences enter




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into environmental policies via such concepts as the social and political discount

rate, property rights and the precautionary principle. Similarly, people’s percep-

tion of their present and future situations play into leading issues in the social

and environmental sciences, such as the likelihood of social movements, the

development of social capital and the feasibility of community-based conserva-tion. More generally, it is evident that every disciplinary specialization in the

social and natural sciences is largely predicated on a preferred level of analysis,

an associated time horizon and a commitment to time and level-dependant con-

cepts and methods. In this way, the models and instruments that distinguish one

discipline from another tend to channel practitioners into largely predetermined

levels of analysis. These, in turn, invoke a host of time-dependent methods that

register events and relationships which only occur within delimited temporal

frequencies. When the temporal foundations of disciplinary specializations go

unrecognized, the oversight can lead to temporal mismatches between thetheories, concepts and instruments that contribute to an integrated study, and to

mismatches between the findings of scientific work and the time horizons of

institutions that implement environmental policy. The likelihood of temporal

inconsistencies can be mitigated by giving attention to three concepts developed

here: temporal grain, temporal fallacy and temporal extent. These observations

underscore the idea that the process of advancing an integrated social-ecological

perspective crucially depends on a pointed recognition of the way that time,

cycles and tempos shape the interactions between social and biophysical sys-

tems.

Notes

This study is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at a conference that cel-ebrated Stephen Bunker’s contribution to sociology called Nature, Raw Materials and Political Economy, held in Madison, Wisconsin on 2 November 2002. I am grateful forhelpful comments provided by Emilio Bruna, Karen Kainer, Derek Lewis, Peggy Lovell,

Elisa Maranzana, Marianne Schmink, Rick Stepp, Dan Zarin and Ana Siqueira, none of whom bears responsibility for this version.

1. The punctual integration of social activities into stable and impersonal schedulesbecame a necessity with the advent of metropolitan life (Urry, 2000). The previousunimagined need for regimentation and co-ordination of activities prompted thestandardization of time, first initiated by railroad companies frustrated by the localtime zones that stood in the way of sensible timetables. Stations only a few miles apartset their clocks to different standards such that trains moving down the track wouldsometimes lurch backward into the past only to bound forward again upon arriving at

the next platform (Levine, 1997). The four time zones we recognize in the US todaywere established in 1883 by the railroads and were put into law by the federal govern-ment in 1918.




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2. In a similar vein, John Hall (1978) found that ‘communal groups based on a dia-chronic scheduling of clock time . . . had difficulty marshaling members’ commitmentbeyond that required for performance of scheduled duties and for this reason groupsolidarity was problematic’ (p. 215). The communities most likely to survive werethose whose members shared an apocalyptic conception of history in which truebelievers construed their temporal existence as lying beyond the present in a timelesseternity. ‘The social temporality of action thus proved to have objective consequencesin objective time’ (Hall, 1984: 215).

3. Although limited to students at the University of Missouri-Columbia, one study docu-mented the lengths of time that people associate with ‘short-term’, ‘mid-term’ and‘long-term’ time horizons (Bluedorn, 2002). Over half (55.5%) defined the short termas three months or less. As for the long term, close to half (45.1%) defined it as beingten or more years ahead.

4. So burdened is the word ‘hierarchy’ by the common meaning of rigid, top-downauthority and control that ecologists have proposed the term ‘panarchy’ (from theGreek god, Pan, universal god of nature) to capture the adaptive and evolutionarynature of multileveled systems (Gunderson and Holling, 2002: 74).

5. To see pictures and architectural drawings of the clock, go to http://www.longnow.org.

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CHARLES H. WOOD is a member and former Director of the Center forLatin American Studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.His research focuses on the causes and consequences of deforestation in theBrazilian Amazon. ADDRESS: Center for Latin American Studies,University of Florida, 319 Grinter Hall, Gainesville, FL 32611–5530, USA.[email: [email protected]]


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