William Millsap - Applied Social Science For Environmental Planning

First published 1984 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright 1984 by Taylor & Francis

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-50999

ISBN 0-86531-707-0

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01549-7 (hbk)

Robert Lynd, in describing sociology, posed the question knowledge for what? some four decades ago. In many respects, this question is still the salient issue for all of the social sciences. Most social scientists are convinced that the information we generate will be useful to society, if not immediately, at some time in the future. Today, the social sciences are being called upon to play an ever-increasing role in applied research and planning. However, this need is more frequently professed than actually required. The problem for social scientists is to discover a context and format in which their knowledge is needed as well as required.

In the fall of 1976, I took an NSF Chautauqua short course on Social Impact Assessment conducted by John Peterson, Jr. Petersons enthusiasm persuaded me to experiment with this new issue. During the next few years, my own interests in cultural ecology and applied anthropology led me to utilize social imapct assessment (SIA) in various settings. I realized that SIA provided a context in which research findings might be applied and a format for that application was assured under the auspices of several legislative enactments. More importantly, it was apparent that numerous colleagues in the social sciences interested in doing applied research were also recognizing the role that SIA could play in studying the social environment. Indicative of this trend are the emergent interest groups that have arisen in the social sciences that now include environmental psychology, environmental sociology, and more recently in anthropology, environmental planning.

This volume represents an attempt to bridge the diversity that is presumed to exist in the social sciences by demonstrating that social science can aid the process of environmental planning. I have chosen to use the term environmental planning in the title in order to stress the planning role that social science should perform when environmental concerns are addressed from a multidisciplinary focus. This is not an attempt to coin a new term. Environmental planning, as used in this volume, refers to the process of utilizing information to aid communities and/or regions adjusting to the impacts of developmental change. The papers in this volume represent contributions from a wide spectrum of the social sciences, all seeking to show how our information can assist other disciplines concerned with understanding changes taking place in the natural and social environments of communities and regions. It is my own view that the social sciences are now on the precipice of finding answers to Lynds question.

William Millsap

Many people have assisted in making this volume possible, first and foremost the authors who have contributed their articles. They have had to endure the editors numerous requests for changes at several stages of preparation. While the final volume contains nineteen papers, many more excellent papers were contributed than could be accommodated by available space. I certainly want to thank those persons who submitted materials for review. My personal thanks are extended to John Peterson, Jr., and James Patterson who reviewed the final manuscript and made many valuable suggestions. Charlie Wolf, the editor of this series, also deserves a note of thanks for his encouragement and guidance as this work finally came together. The final product is the result of many hours of typing and my personal gratitude goes out to my typists, Lynn Fancher and Tammy Southridge, who gave unsparingly of themselves during the final preparation of the manuscript. Finally, this book is dedicated to Karen, without whose ideas and support this volume would not have been completed. Naturally, the shape and outcome of the final product are the responsibility of the editor.