Social Ecology in the Digital Age: Solving Complex Problems in a Globalized World

By Daniel Stokols

Social Ecology in the Digital Age: Solving Complex Problems in a Globalized World provides a comprehensive overview of social ecological theory, research, and practice. Written by renowned expert Daniel Stokols, the book distills key principles from diverse strands of ecological science, offering a robust framework for transdisciplinary research and societal problem-solving. The existential challenges of the 21st Century - global climate change and climate-change denial, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, disease pandemics, inter-ethnic violence and the threat of nuclear war, cybercrime, the Digital Divide, and extreme poverty and income inequality confronting billions each day - cannot be understood and managed adequately from narrow disciplinary or political perspectives.

Social Ecology in the Digital Age is grounded in scientific research but written in a personal and informal style from the vantage point of a former student, current teacher and scholar who has contributed over four decades to the field of social ecology. The book will be of interest to scholars, students, educators, government leaders and community practitioners working in several fields including social and human ecology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, criminology, law, education, biology, medicine, public health, earth system and sustainability science, geography, environmental design, urban planning, informatics, public policy and global governance.

Winner of the 2018 Gerald L. Young Book Award from The Society for Human Ecology"Exemplifying the highest standards of scholarly work in the field of human ecology." https://societyforhumanecology.org/human-ecology-homepage/awards/gerald-l-young-book-award-in-human-ecology/

• The book traces historical origins and conceptual foundations of biological, human, and social ecology
• Offers a new conceptual framework that brings together earlier approaches to social ecology and extends them in novel directions
• Highlights the interrelations between four distinct but closely intertwined spheres of human environments: our natural, built, sociocultural, and virtual (cyber-based) surroundings
• Spans local to global scales and individual, organizational, community, regional, and global levels of analysis
• Applies core principles of social ecology to identify multi-level strategies for promoting personal and public health, resolving complex social problems, managing global environmental change, and creating resilient and sustainable communities
• Underscores social ecology’s vital importance for understanding and managing the environmental and political upheavals of the 21st Century
• Highlights descriptive, analytic, and transformative (or moral) concerns of social ecology
• Presents strategies for educating the next generation of social ecologists emphasizing transdisciplinary, team-based, translational, and transcultural approaches

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780128031148

Daniel Stokols

Daniel Stokols is widely known for his contributions to the fields of social ecology, environmental and ecological psychology, public health, and transdisciplinary team science. He is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine and served as founding dean of UCI’s School of Social Ecology. Stokols also has served as consultant to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the W.M. Keck and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, and several community organizations. He is co-author of Behavior, Health, and Environmental Stress (1986), the National Academy of Sciences report on Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science (2015), editor of Perspectives on Environment and Behavior (1977), and co-editor of the Handbook of Environmental Psychology (1987), Environmental Simulation (1993) and Promoting Human Wellness (2002).

Book preview

Social Ecology in the Digital Age

Solving Complex Problems in a Globalized World

Daniel Stokols

University of California, Irvine

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Preface

1. Discovering Social Ecology: A Personal Journey

An Aspiring Marine Biologist

From South Miami to South Chicago

Dr. Lenhoff, I Presume?

Why I Decided to Write This Book

2. Historical Origins and Conceptual Foundations of Social Ecology

The Emergence of Biological Ecology

From Biological to Human Ecology

Toward a Broader View of Human Ecosystems: Social Ecology

3. Deriving Core Principles of Social Ecology

From Isolating Variables to Putting Them in Context

Toward a More Systematic Approach to Social Ecology

Describing the Structure and Dynamic Qualities of Human Environments: Core Principles

Analytic Goals of Social Ecology: Developing Guidelines for Contextual Theorizing and Research

Looking Back and Moving Forward

4. Rise of the Internet—Navigating Our Online and Place-Based Ecologies

Transitioning From the Predigital to the Digital Age

Understanding People’s Transactions With the Natural, Built, Sociocultural, and Virtual Environment—A Social Ecological View

5. Promoting Personal and Public Health

The Biomedical Model of Health and Disease

The Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease

Social Ecological Analyses of Health and Illness

Summing Up and Looking Ahead

6. Confronting Complex Social Problems

Defining Social Problems

Understanding Complex Problems From a Social Ecological Perspective

Using Social Ecological Strategies to Resolve Complex Community Problems

Putting Case Studies of Social Problems in Broader Perspective

From Resolving Social Problems to Managing Global Environmental Change

7. Managing Global Environmental Change

Awakening the World to the Global Impacts of Human-Caused Environmental Change: From Scientific Evidence of Ozone Depletion to Remedial Action

Confronting Global Climate Change and Its Wide-Ranging Impacts on Environmental Habitability, Societal Well-Being, and Population Health

Social Ecological Approaches to Global Climate Change—Why They Are Urgently Needed

Creating a More Sustainable and Resilient Planet

8. Designing Resilient and Sustainable Communities

The Social Ecology of Resilience and Sustainability

Sustainable Development Initiatives in the 21st Century

Developing Evidence-Based Guidelines for Creating Resilient and Sustainable Communities

Behavioral and Educational Strategies to Promote Community Resilience and Sustainability

9. Educating the Next Generation of Social Ecologists

Defining Disciplinary and Cross-Disciplinary Research

Nurturing a Transdisciplinary Orientation

Nurturing Competence in Team Science

Cultivating Translational Research Skills

Building Capacity for Transcultural Research

The Four T’s of Social Ecological Training

10. Epilogue

Author Index

Subject Index

Copyright

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ISBN: 978-0-12-814188-5

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Publisher: Nikki Levy

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Editorial Project Manager: Barbara Makinster

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Front Cover Artwork: Andrew Stokols

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Dedication

To my wife Jeanne and my sons, Eli and Andrew, who have been there for me at every step of the journey to provide their love and encouragement—I am grateful every day to have them by my side—and to the memory of my parents, Harriet and Sol Stokols, and my brother Michael, whose love and support helped me find my footing during the earliest days of my journey and beyond.

Acknowledgments

I would never have been in a position to write this book without the encouragement and support of family, mentors, colleagues, and students. The earliest inklings of my interest in social ecology are traceable to the years when I was growing up in Miami, Florida, as I describe in Chapter 1. My parents, Harriet and Sol Stokols, worked long hours in their appliance store in Miami but they always went out of their way to support my school activities and nonacademic pursuits. When my dad passed away at the end of my junior year in high school in 1964, my mom encouraged me to apply to colleges not only in Florida but also in other states. She eventually urged me to attend the University of Chicago rather than remain in Miami because she believed that going away for college would be valuable for me, even though my staying in Miami would have been more convenient for her. My older brother Michael also looked out for me and helped me through some challenging times as I was growing up. He passed away in 2016 as I worked on this book. I will always be grateful to my parents and brother for their love and support over so many years.

I met my wife Jeanne during the first week of graduate school in North Carolina. I am very lucky to have had the benefit of her love and encouragement in every facet of our lives ever since. As I worked on the book, she read chapter drafts and offered valuable suggestions about the manuscript. Jeanne and our sons Eli and Andrew have been my inspiration through every phase of this project and beyond. Eli’s comments on chapter drafts nudged me to strive for greater clarity and to make the text accessible to audiences beyond academia. His insights improved the text in innumerable ways. Andrew reviewed various chapters and contributed the artwork that graces the front cover of the book and additional illustrations included in Chapters 1 and 4. I am grateful for all of their contributions to the book. Most of all, I am grateful to have them in my life—I cannot imagine undertaking and completing this project without them.

My academic development was guided by excellent mentors at each stage of my education. As a high school senior, I worked with Professor Howard Lenhoff on a research project completed in his Laboratory for Quantitative Biology at the University of Miami in 1965. Several years later Howard and I became faculty colleagues at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). As Chair of the UCI Academic Senate in 1990, Howard assisted my colleagues and me as we submitted proposals to establish new degree programs and reorganize our Program in Social Ecology as a School. In college, I took a social psychology course cotaught by sociologist Richard Flacks and psychologist Thomas Crawford (who also later became my colleague in Social Ecology at UCI) that sparked my interest in interdisciplinary behavioral research. After graduating from the University of Chicago, I entered the social psychology PhD program at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, where I was fortunate to have Professors John Schopler and John Thibaut as my masters thesis and dissertation advisors. They supported my studies of crowding and alienation in groups, topics that were outside the mainstream of social psychology at the time. They also enabled me to pursue minors in fields beyond the psychology department. I took a class on human ecology with Professor Amos Hawley in Sociology and courses in City and Regional Planning with Professors F. Stuart Chapin, Robert Mayer, and Sidney Cohn. I also participated in research projects in Public Health with Professors C. David Jenkins and John Cassel. All of these individuals had a profound influence on the development of my interdisciplinary research interests at UNC and the directions of my career as a faculty member at UCI.

My conception of social ecology has been forged through collaborations with outstanding faculty colleagues at UCI. I was recruited to Irvine in 1973 by Arnold Binder, founding Director of the Social Ecology Program. The Program was established in 1970, fueled by Binder’s leadership and vision. I remained at UCI throughout my career because it afforded such unique opportunities to help build an innovative, interdisciplinary research and degree-granting unit at the University of California. During my 45  years at Irvine, I have worked with scores of faculty colleagues in Social Ecology. Though I am not able to mention all of them in this space, I do want to thank several colleagues whose efforts during the 1970s–90s were pivotal in establishing a strong academic and institutional foundation for UCI’s Program in Social Ecology and its successor, the School of Social Ecology. Ralph Catalano and John Monahan wrote proposals to create the BA, masters, and doctoral degrees in social ecology and developed core undergraduate and graduate courses, working closely with Arnold Binder, Carol Whalen, Gilbert Geis, John Flowers, Ellen Greenberger, Laurence Steinberg, John Whiteley, Peter Scharf, Robert Meier, Steve Simmons, Arthur Boughey, Geraldine Sandor, and other founding faculty members in the 1970s.

The Social Ecology Program was guided by five directors from 1970 to 1988: Arnold Binder, Gilbert Geis (interim), Ellen Greenberger, Joseph DiMento, and Salvatore Maddi. I was appointed director in 1988 and had the unique opportunity to work with faculty colleagues over the next several years to establish new undergraduate and graduate degree programs and create a vibrant School of Social Ecology at UCI. Carol Whalen, Ellen Greenberger, Alison Clarke-Stewart, Raymond Novaco, Thomas Crawford, Elaine Vaughan, Roxanne Silver, Wendy Goldberg, Linda Levine, Chuansheng Chen, Arnold Binder, Gilbert Geis, Henry Pontell, James Meeker, John Dombrink, William Thompson, Kitty Calavita, Joseph DiMento, Richard McCleary, Paul Jesilow, Betty Olson, Jonathan Ericson, John Whiteley, Ken Chew, Steven Colome, Oladele Ogunseitan, Gary Evans, Ross Conner, Tammy Tengs, Luis Suarez-Villa, Sanjoy Mazumdar, Mark Baldassare, Lois Takahashi, Randall Crane, Amrita Daniere, Marlon Boarnet, Kristen Day, Scott Bollens, and others worked together to implement new degrees in Psychology and Social Behavior; Criminology, Law, and Society; Environmental Health Science and Policy; Urban and Regional Planning; and Applied Ecology. These more specialized degree programs, in addition to our preexisting BA, masters, and PhD degrees in Social Ecology, bolstered the academic and administrative foundation of the newly established School, formally approved by the UC Regents in 1992. As dean of the new school, I worked closely with Karen Rook and David Dooley, Social Ecology’s first Associate Deans for Graduate and Undergraduate Studies. Karen and Dave collaborated with the chairs of our new departments—Carol Whalen, Betty Olson, and Arnold Binder—to create Senate bylaws, academic policies and procedures for the new School. In later years, the School was led by former deans, Arnold Binder (interim), Ronald Huff, Valerie Jenness, Carroll Seron (interim), and current dean, Nancy Guerra.

I owe a debt of gratitude to all these colleagues and so many others who have joined our faculty during the last two decades. Their vision, perseverance, and commitment to transdisciplinary collaboration opened new lines of ecological research and teaching from the 1970s onward. These collaborative opportunities may not have been available to us in more traditional, discipline-based departments and schools. The faculty’s efforts to sustain Social Ecology at UCI over the past 50  years honor the memory and dedication of six former colleagues who passed away between 2009 and 2016: Jonathan Ericson, Gilbert Geis, Elaine Vaughan, Alison Clarke-Stewart, Carol Whalen, and John Flowers; and PhD alumni, Eric Runnerstrom, Stephen Rosoff, and MURP alumna, Malancha Ghosh.

I also have had the opportunity to work closely with colleagues from other UCI departments and schools including Public Health, Epidemiology, Nursing Science, Informatics, Business, Social Sciences, and Earth System Science, as well as the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, the Center for Organizational Research, The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, the Newkirk Center for Science and Society, the Empowering Sustainability Fellows Program, the Center for Unconvential Security Affairs, and the UCI Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center. Bonnie Nardi, Bill Tomlinson, Gloria Mark, Debra Richardson, Don Patterson, Judy and Gary Olson, Six Silberman, and Rob Kling from the School of Information and Computer Sciences broadened my knowledge of environmental and social informatics, sustainable computing, the cognitive and behavioral costs of multitasking, and team science collaboration over the Internet. I have been fortunate to work as well with Dan Cooper, Margaret Schneider, and Maritza Salazar at UCI’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Science on a series of team science research projects.

Others at UCI that influenced the directions of my research, teaching, and administrative activities are Daniel G. Aldrich, Jr., Lyman Porter, James McGaugh, Howard and Sylvia Lenhoff, William Lillyman, William Schonfeld, James Danziger, Robert Newcomb, Michael Burton, Samuel Gilmore, Ellen Olshansky, Alison Holman, Spencer Olin, Jack Peltason, Chang-Lin Tien, Sidney Golub, Leon Schwartz, Hoda Anton Culver, Chen Tsai, Samuel McCulloch, Ralph Cicerone, Wendell Brase, Elizabeth Toomey, Martha and Jim Newkirk, Bob, Lori, and Chace Warmington, Roger and Janice Johnson, William Parker, Ron Wilson, Julia Gelfand, Jan Martin, Carol Stanley, Jean Martinez, Profull Gupta, Barbara Bertin, Frank Meyskens, James Fallon, Oladele Ogunseitan, Lisa Grant Ludwig, Tim Bruckner, Miryha Runnerstrom, Gerald Sinykin, Said Shokair, G.P. Li, Barbara Davidson, Michele Miller, De Gallow, Frances Leslie, Helen Ingram, Dave Feldman, Richard Matthew, Jean Daniel Saphores, Rick Donovan, Stephen Franklin, David Kirkby, Jone Pearce, Mary Gilly, Judy Rosener, John Graham, David Obstfeld, Nina Bandelj, and Melissa Mazmanian. I thank them all for their colleagueship and support.

Beyond the Irvine Campus, I have been fortunate to work with outstanding colleagues at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and the National Academies Keck Foundation Futures Initiative (NAKFI) for promoting interdisciplinary research. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate closely with Robert Croyle, Kara Hall, Richard Moser, Brooke Stipelman, Amanda Vogel, Annie Feng, Janet Okamoto, Brandie Taylor, Linda Nebeling, Brad Hesse, Stephen Marcus, Glen Morgan, Barbara Rimer, and their colleagues at NCI; Anne Heberger Marino, Kimberly Suda Blake, and Ken Fulton at NAKFI; and Margaret Hilton, Tina Winters, and Barbara Wanchisen at NASEM. My studies of team science and interdisciplinary education at UCI and beyond also have been enriched by my collaboration with Juliana Fuqua, Jennifer Gress, Richard Harvey, Kimari Phillips, Shalini Misra, Chitvan Trivedi, Larry Jamner, John Whiteley, Sally Dickerson, Atusa Baghery, Andrew Johnson, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Justin Nash, David Abrams, Julie Thompson Klein, Patricia Rosenfield, Frank Kessel, Stephen Fiore, Holly Falk-Krzesinski, Bonnie Spring, Gabriele Bammer, William Trochim, Christian Pohl, Arnim Wiek, Michael O’Rourke, Sanford Eigenbrode, Stephen Crowley, Richard Carp, Scott Leischow, Margaret Palmer, Katy Borner, Robert Frodeman, Brit Holbrook, William Newell, Michael Crow, Noshir Contractor, Brian Uzzi, Nancy Cooke, Steve Kozlowski, Jonathon Cummings, James Jackson, John King, Jeremy Sabloff, Roger Blandford, and Hannah Valentine.

My research in the fields of environmental psychology, environmental design research, community health promotion, and social ecology have benefitted enormously from my collaborations on research grants, writing projects, and exchanges of ideas over many years with Irwin Altman, Gary Evans, Sheldon Cohen, David Krantz, Ralph Catalano, Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, Allan Wicker, Kathryn Anthony, William Michelson, Jack Wohlwill, Robert Marans, Sy Wapner, Peter Everett, M. Powell Lawton, Andrew Baum, Dru Sherrod, Sanjoy and Shampa Mazumdar, Kristen Day, Braddie Dooley, Eric Sundstrom, Doug Perkins, Reid Ewing, Paul Stern, Terry Hartig, Tommy Garling, David Magnusson, Josh Holahan, Sam Gosling, Stuart Oskamp, David Glass, Jerome Singer, M. Brewster Smith, Chalsa Loo, Chris Dunkel Schetter, Roderick Lawrence, Rich Borden, Rob Dyball, Howard Frumkin, Harold Proshansky, Roger Barker, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Susan Saegert, Leanne Rivlin, Gary Winkel, William Ittelson, Robert Bechtel, Jack Nasar, Mark Francis, Ed Willems, David Canter, Robert Gifford, Michael Brill, Steve Margulis, Barbara Brown, Carol Werner, Anita Blanchard, Kenneth Craik, Donald Appleyard, Clare Cooper Marcus, Robert Sommer, Leonard Syme, Lester Breslow, Rudolph Moos, Ralph Taylor, Doug Perkins, Ana Mari Cauce, Scott Geller, Richard Wener, John Zeisel, Andrew Seidel, Gary Moore, Amos Rapoport, Jay Farbstein, Abe Wandersman, Craig Zimring, Erv Zube, Harry Heft, Richard Lazarus, Nancy Adler, Peter Suedfeld, Allan Best, Michael O’Donnell, James Sallis, Kevin Patrick, Howard Friedman, Robert Kaplan, Billie Giles-Corti, Willem van Vliet, Wolf Preiser, Kenneth Gergen, Nehemia Friedland, Arza Churchman, Rikard Kuller, Mirilia Bonnes, Robert Cialdini, Martin Krovetz, Maria Montero, Raul Lejano, Daniel Orenstein, Jennifer Holzer; and UCI Social Ecology colleagues Raymond Novaco, Karen Rook, Ellen Greenberger, Wendy Goldberg, Linda Levine, David Dooley, Roxanne Silver, Carol Whalen, Chuansheng Chen, Elizabeth Loftus, Pete Ditto, Henry Pontell, John Hipp, Joseph DiMento, and Martha Feldman. They all have contributed in important ways to my understanding of people’s relationships with their environments, and my view of social ecology more broadly.

During my years at UCI, I have been privileged to teach courses on social ecology, environmental psychology, environmental design research, and strategies of theory development to several cohorts of undergraduate and graduate students. I have been energized and inspired by mentoring so many enthusiastic, creative students who share a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research and societal problem-solving. Many of my former students and postdoctoral advisees have become colleagues and coauthors with me after graduating from UCI. It is impossible to list all the terrific students I have worked with during my career but I want to mention several alumni of our school who have gone on to make important scholarly and professional contributions to the fields of social ecology, public policy, environment and behavior studies, and public health: David Altman, Maryann Jacobi Gray, Linda Naiditch, David Marrero, Edward Weeks, Mike Markowitz, Susan Resnick, Eleanor Saltzer, Francis Dickman, Suzanne Iacono, Christine Jackson, Sherry Arentzen, Sybil Carrere, Martha Newkirk, Joan Petersilia, Paul Jesilow, Bobby Lovell, Phil Ituarte, Richard Tafalla, Gregory Jue, Shalini Misra, Chitvan Trivedi, Megan Lewis, Doug Levine, Joan Campbell, Keith Neuman, Arlene Brownell, Douglas Granger, Alan Vaux, Martha Pedersen, Katherine Lyon Daniel, Holly Magana, Connie Malone, Thomas, Gerald, and William Parham, Cornelia Brentano, Marlis Mang, Ted Scharf, Gregory Robinson, Patricia Winter, Susan Milden, Richard Weiss, Brett Fallavollita, Pamela Doughman, Kathleen Ham Rowbottom, Steven Wright, JoAnn Prause, Sharon Brown, Shari Mitchell, Diana Grant, Louis Milanesi, Sharon Hamill, Shari McMahan, Terry Hartig, John Martinez, Sheryl Kelly, Laurie Poore, Stephen Lepore, Donna Hill, Allison Holman, Beverly Sandeen, John Astin, Kimberly Witte, Chris Brown, Cynthia Smith, Meredith Wells-Lepley, Margaret Schneider, Georjeanna Wilson-Doenges, William Hoffman, Mai Nguyen, Crystal Murphy, Mariela Alfonzo, Anne Taufen Wessesl, Kathy Quick, Hilary Nixon, Luke Thelen, Toby Warden, Erin Kent, Aaron Hipp, Bryan McDonald, Thomas Wicke, Dan Graham, Mindy Hightower, Heidi Skolnik, Maithilee Pathak, Genevieve Dunton, Tracy McMillan, Richard Harvey, Dara Sorkin, Sarah Becker, Juliana Fuqua, Jennifer Gress, Janel Alberts, Miryha Runnerstrom, Eric Runnerstrom, Erit Maor, Jean Granger, Priel Schmalbach, Courtney Murphy, Rupak Datta, Mary Zmuidzinas, Wendy Kliewer, Chip Clitheroe, Mark Combs, Michael Poulin, John Billimek, Cathy Garland Pavlos, Erin Kelly, Marina Kahana, Angela Sanquinetti, Scott Smith, Mike Powe, Candice Carr Kelman, Kathleen Hibbert, Natalia Milovantseva, Erualdo Gonzalez, Jennifer Veitch, Rachel Struglia, Merlyn Griffiths, Julia Dmitrieva, Kyle Chang, Jesse Baker, Chris Boyko, Jeff Cho, Cory Clark, Mojgan Sami, Natalie Baker, Katie Pine, Victoria Lowerson Bredow, Beth Karlin, Nora Davis, I-cha Lee, Jessica Perez, Rupa Jose, Sung Jin Park, Oscar Tsai, Juliana Zanotto, Alexis Bateman, Omar Yousef, Wei Li, Sally Geislar, Cecilia Kim, Jennifer Robinette, Vanessa Juth, Mike Russell, Tamar ElGindi, Hiroshi Ishikawa, Harya Dillon, and Brooke Jenkins.

I also want to thank current doctoral students Deborah Lefkowitz, Samantha Gailey, Johnny Hunter, Fei Yang, Marie Cross, Allison Laskey, Pauline Lubens, Jamie Allgood, Raheleh Khorsan, Bemmy Maharramli, Kristen Goodrich, Evgenia Nizkorodov, Wing Ho Cheung, Asiya Natekal, Tera Dornfeld, Connor Harron, Brian Hui, Phillip Lee, and Francisco Fernandez for their inspiration; and former postdoctoral scholars Sally Shumaker, Barbara Brown, Carolyn Aldwin, Tracy Revenson, Patricia Parmelee, Barbara Curbow, Janaea Martin, Joseph Grzywacz, Andrea Dull, Cemilie Tiftik, Hirofumi Minata, Alice Brown, Sonomi Hirata, Maria Montero, Yuan Zhang, and Julien Forbat. We are very proud of our alumni, students, and postdoctoral scholars—they and their fellow Social Ecology graduates are the interdisciplinary legacy of our School.

I have learned so much from the many colleagues, alumni, and students mentioned above, and from so many others as well. This book is truly a by-product of my collaboration with them spanning multiple fields and decades. I apologize to colleagues and students whom I may have omitted inadvertently in these acknowledgments.

I also thank the residents of Val Verde, California, who participated in the study of environmental justice described in Chapter 6, and to members of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE). They have shown great courage and perseverance over several decades through their sustained efforts to protect their communities from the health risks posed by living near one of the largest landfills in the US.

One of my most enjoyable nonacademic pursuits over the years has been playing keyboards with friends in the Butler Street Blues Band in and around UCI. Our musical adventures have afforded much levity and respite during our 35  +  years of camaraderie and gigs. I thank my bandmates David Schetter (who sadly passed away in 2016), Henry Pontell, Ken Mease, Gedina Bergstrom, Kent Mark, Denis Pepin, Edd Ruskovitz, Jim McGaugh, Hal Moore, Eric Wright, Rick Renner, Dennis Aigner, Mark Severson, Rich Cozzi, and Rafael Feliciano.

Finally, I want to express my appreciation to my editors at Academic Press. Emily Ekle, Senior Acquisitions Editor, encouraged me to write this book and offered valuable editorial advice as I developed the prospectus and draft chapters. Barbara Makinster, Senior Editorial Project Manager, provided excellent oversight throughout all phases of the book’s production. I was also fortunate to have the benefit of Anusha Sambamoorthy’s editorial expertise as the manuscript progressed toward publication. My sincere thanks go to Emily, Barbara, and Anusha for their encouragement and support as I worked on this project.

Daniel Stokols,     Irvine, California

September 2017

About the Author

Daniel Stokols is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine and served as founding dean of UCI’s School of Social Ecology. His contributions span the fields of social ecology, environmental and ecological psychology, public health, and transdisciplinary team science. Stokols has served as consultant to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the W.M. Keck and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, and several community organizations. He is coauthor of Behavior, Health, and Environmental Stress (1986), the National Academy of Sciences report on Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science (2015), editor of Perspectives on Environment and Behavior, and coeditor of the Handbook of Environmental Psychology (1987), Environmental Simulation (1993), and Promoting Human Wellness (2002).

Preface

It is Sunday March 12, 2017. I set my clock forward by one hour. They call it daylight savings time, but I think I just lost an hour. Still, I heave a sigh of relief as I save changes in my Word document after typing the last sentence of the last remaining chapter. I began working on this book in December 2014 and have just finished a complete draft 28  months later. I sometimes wondered whether and when I would reach this milestone. Then today, I finally held the last remaining chapter draft in hand.

This was to be a summation of my 40-plus years of teaching and research at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), a place I never could have guessed would become my permanent home when I arrived in 1973. It was also to be the story of something called social ecology, a school of interdisciplinary thought that eventually became, after years of relentless meetings, proposals and hearings, an actual School on the Irvine Campus—and thanks to the contributions of countless faculty, students, and working professionals in Irvine and elsewhere, a vanguard for a new approach to real-world problems. At UCI and in Orange County, social ecology was initially dismissed as the brainchild of a peculiar band of tree-hugging intellectuals who spent too much time in the California sun. Over the last few decades, though, the approach itself—at its core, a commitment to interdisciplinary research and collaboration as a means toward improving everything from office design to urban grids and, by extension, individual and public health—had seemingly been absorbed into the scientific and cultural mainstream, propelled by technological shifts that have shrunk the world into the size of an iPhone.

But as I sat writing at my desk inside the office on the second floor of the home where my wife and I have lived almost as long as I have taught at UCI, the world—and my working assumptions about what I wanted to say—continued to change, often in alarming and disorienting ways. I strove to stay focused on the writing at hand but my attention was often diverted by jarring reports of fractured polar ice sheets, flooded coastal cities, toxic oil spills, and successive years of record-breaking temperature rise [1–4]. When I would take breaks from writing, I sometimes turned on the TV only to encounter wall-to-wall coverage of an unpredictable presidential election and a celebrity candidate propelled by a virulent strain of nationalism—a distraction from writing, yes, but relaxing, no.

The results of the US elections in November 2016 threaten to upend years of meticulous climate research by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and scale back or completely eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The newly appointed head of the EPA, when asked whether carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming, tersely replied: No, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. (March 9, 2017 [5]). On April 28th, the day before hundreds of thousands gathered in nearly 400 cities across the United States and around the globe to protest inaction on climate change, the EPA wiped previously posted information on global warming from its website [6].

The past two and a half years have seen some encouraging developments too, including Pope Francis’ full-throated endorsement of global sustainability goals in May 2015 [7], ratification of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change by a majority of United Nations (UN) members in October 2016 [8], and the rapid growth of renewable energy capacity worldwide [9]. But on balance, I found the political and environmental turbulence of the last several months disheartening—especially the refusal by some world leaders to even recognize, let alone confront, the existential crises we are now facing—while denying clear-cut scientific evidence of their severity. The dramatic events unfolding as I wrote not only forced me to continually revise the chapters to keep them updated, but they also served to clarify the vital importance of the research and policy concerns addressed in the book. Amid the broader recognition of the value of social ecology as a framework for resolving complex problems—and, quite possibly, in reaction to it—there now seems to be a strong counter-trend of turning inward toward myopic, nationalistic go-it-alone-ism that endangers global peace and sustainability. A case in point is President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement on June 1, 2017, characterized by the Washington Post as an "abdication of American leadership in the face of irrefutable scientific evidence" [10].

I continue to believe that only by working cooperatively across disciplines, nations, and continents can we avoid societal collapse and create a more sustainable world for future generations. The knowledge base and problem-solving strategies of social ecology described in this book are offered with those goals in mind.

The Great Acceleration and Its Aftermath

From the 1950s onward, an avalanche of scientific, medical, and technological advances lifted millions out of poverty and enabled humans to explore outer space and communicate with each other instantaneously over the Internet. Economic growth and the standard of living in developed countries soared to unprecedented levels. These material gains spurred new initiatives to promote world peace, protect environmental quality, and safeguard the rights of women, children, and other vulnerable groups. Strides toward societal improvement included, among others, the establishment of the UN after World War II, enactment of civil rights legislation in the United States in 1964, and worldwide ratification of the Montreal Protocol in 1987—an international treaty that has been remarkably successful in protecting the earth’s stratospheric ozone layer [11].

Ironically, the Great Acceleration of human knowledge, productivity, and well-being during the late 20th Century unleashed an onslaught of global challenges that have become glaringly evident in the 21st Century [12]. The world is poised on the brink of a potentially catastrophic meltdown—both literally and figuratively. Though that may sound like hyperbole, the assertion is warranted by our present planetary predicament [13,14]. With the discovery of the steam engine in 1784 and the Industrial Revolution that followed, humans’ consumption of fossil fuels surged. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) rose precipitously during the past two centuries to levels not seen in over 800,000  years [15]. All indications are that global climate change is accelerating. Planetary warming already has triggered a cascade of adverse events from glacial melting, sea rise, coastal flooding, and ocean acidification, to food insecurity, health crises, and violent conflict over scarce resources [16–18].

As the earth’s temperature continues to climb, we are witnessing not only the meltdown of polar ice sheets but also an erosion of societal institutions. Political currents sweeping the globe threaten to undermine federal regulations and international accords enacted in the 20th Century to protect human rights, reduce environmental pollution, and avert nuclear war. Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical Letter on The Environment aptly noted that "environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked" [[7], Section 56]. At a time when global collaboration is urgently needed to address complex economic, environmental, health, and security challenges, some governments have taken a great leap backward toward nativism, xenophobia, and nationalistic political movements that derogate and exclude outsiders. Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) and President Trump’s America First campaign and exit from the Paris climate accord are emblematic of these trends.

The advent of the Digital Age in the 1980s introduced additional instability into an already fraught world. Information technologies and mobile communications brought tremendous conveniences to billions of people through online shopping, global positioning system (GPS) navigation, and instantaneous access to unlimited information—but they generated a slew of negative outcomes as well. Factory automation and the proliferation of robots have wiped out millions of traditional manufacturing jobs [19]. The electricity needed to fuel the cybersphere is now a major source of GHGs and consumes a growing portion of the world’s energy budget [20]. Another unfortunate by-product of the Digital Age is the widespread use of the Internet to propagate hate, prejudice, fake news, plagiarism, and crime [21–24]. According to the Oxford University Dictionary, 2016 marked the beginning of the post-truth age in which raw emotion and ideology take precedence over empirical evidence and scientific knowledge [25]. Some world leaders continue to deny the reality of human-caused climate change and advocate exclusionary policies that undermine global cooperation and peace [5,26,27]. It is as if the world has slid backward from its Millennial aspirations into a darker and more ominous phase. As much as this social media, on-demand age can shrink our world and broaden our horizons, our self-curated Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds enable us to engage with a narrower world of friends whom we mostly agree with [28]. Just as Spotify ensures we rarely hear a song we do not like, our social networks can often foster a self-reinforcing provincialism among users who experience the world via an endless feed of updates, images, and opinions from the like-minded [29].

These dystopian developments have not escaped notice in business, science, and government sectors. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, announced his company’s commitment to principles of Building Global Community in an ambitious manifesto published in February 2017 [30]. A few months earlier, reflecting on the broad ramifications of global climate change, computer automation, authoritarian political movements, and increasing inequality worldwide, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking wrote:

Now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together… we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but we have not yet developed the ability to escape it… Right now, we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it. To do that, we need to break down, not build up, barriers within and between nations [31].

Why This Book Now?

The premises for writing this book are twofold. One is societal or practical, the other scientific and analytic. As the planet becomes more fragile with each passing day, humankind’s best hope for survival is to counter tribalism and narrow-mindedness with broad-gauged scientific analyses of the world’s most vexing problems. We must reverse the great regression of the early 21st Century through international collaboration in science and education. Social ecology offers a multilevel, systems-oriented approach for understanding and resolving today’s complex environmental, health, and social problems. Ecology, at its core, is the study of organisms’ relationships with their environments [32]. Social ecology is especially concerned with how people’s behavior and well-being are influenced by their everyday surroundings, which include natural, built, sociocultural, and virtual features of environments. These different facets of environments affect our emotions, behavior, and health in myriad ways. We, in turn, actively modify our surroundings, both intentionally and unintentionally, at local as well as regional and global levels.

Learning how people and their environments influence each other is not simply an academic pursuit. Understanding the intricacies of human–environment transactions is essential for remedying complex societal problems. Social ecology’s embrace of multiscale, cross-disciplinary collaborative approaches to science and public policy stand in stark contrast—indeed, in staunch opposition—to the narrowly regressive views now espoused in many parts of the world and epitomized by climate change denial, gender bias, racial and religious intolerance, and isolationism. Social ecology is a conceptual and practical antidote to the great regression of the early 21st Century. Confronting the urgent challenges of global warming, environmental pollution, disease pandemics, economic inequality, poverty, violence, cybercrime, and war will require an understanding of ecological systems that is commensurate with their complexity.

For social ecology to be useful in problem-solving contexts, its core principles and methods must be comprehensible to scholars and practitioners alike. In addition to translating ecological science into environmental and societal improvement, a second major purpose of this book is to convey the historical origins, conceptual principles, and research methods of social ecology as a scientific field. Currently there are several schools or academic centers of social ecological scholarship and training across the globe.¹ Some of these university programs identify themselves as human ecology centers, whereas others use the term, social ecology, to describe their research and educational mission [33].² Human and social ecology overlap in many respects, yet there have been few efforts previously to discern the common and divergent features of these fields. Schools of human and social ecology both contribute to ecological research and practice in valuable ways but, for the most part, they have remained separate and isolated from each other. The lack of contact between academic programs rooted in common assumptions can promote fragmentation and a lack of conceptual coherence in particular fields. To counter these trends, I discuss prior conceptions of human and social ecology and suggest areas of potential overlap and integration among them. My intent is to offer a more unified framework for multiscalar, cross-disciplinary research on people’s relationships with their surroundings.

Although this book builds on the diverse literatures of human and social ecology, it also extends them in new directions. First, prior conceptions of social and human ecology define these fields as the study of people’s relationships with their built, natural, and sociocultural environments. Existing ecological models, however, have all but neglected a fourth and increasingly important sphere of environmental influence on behavior and well-being—namely the cybersphere, which first emerged in the early 1980s. My conception of social ecology highlights the intermingling of the Internet and other cyber technologies with the built, natural, and sociocultural features of human environments. The connections between people’s virtual and place-based worlds are a major focus of my approach to social ecology. The cybersphere consists of multiple components such as computers, routers, smartphones, the World Wide Web, the Internet of Things, social media, and the sharing economy (e.g., Airbnb, Craigslist, Zipcar, Uber). The cybersphere has impacted the structure and functioning of our built and social environments and the sustainability of natural resources due to the large amount of electricity it consumes worldwide. Ecological analyses of humans’ relationships with their environments in today’s world must address the virtual, as well as physical, social, and natural features of their everyday surroundings.

Second, while earlier versions of human and social ecology have focused largely on macrolevel relationships between societal (e.g., political and economic) forces and the large-scale natural environment (e.g., climate change and global sustainability) (cf., Refs. [34–41]), this book emphasizes a more fine-grained multilevel approach to ecological research and community problem-solving. My conception of social ecology spans micro to macro scales of the environment and includes individual, small group, organizational, institutional, community, regional, and global levels of analysis.³ Viewing social ecological systems at multiple scales is crucial for understanding how people’s local and remote surroundings affect their day-to-day behavior and well-being. Complex societal problems can only be understood and remedied by considering them at several levels.⁴ The production of GHGs and global warming, for example, is influenced not only by national and international environmental policies but also by regional and municipal strategies (e.g., state-wide taxes on carbon use and bans on plastic bags and bottles, neighborhood recycling programs), organizational and institutional investments in renewable energy, and individuals’ adoption of sustainable lifestyles, values and behavior. Also, as noted in later chapters, the overall viability of regional and global ecosystems is closely tied to the psychological resilience of individuals; the social cohesiveness of groups; the ecological costs and sustainability of buildings and urban infrastructures; and continuity of natural resources and the biosphere.

Whether studying people’s relationships with their environments or working to improve them, the scientific and practical goals of social ecology can be advanced more effectively through multi rather than single-scale analyses. Multilevel approaches to scientific and societal problem-solving combine diverse academic, professional, and lay perspectives. The approach to social ecology described in this book draws widely on theoretical concepts, research methods, and problem-solving strategies from several fields such as biology, psychology, sociology, law, geography, medicine, public health, earth system science, philosophy, anthropology, architecture, urban planning, computer science, public policy, international relations, and others. Each of these fields offers unique insights into the study and practice of social ecology.

How the Book Is Organized

In keeping with the scientific and problem-solving concerns of social ecology, the chapters are organized around three goals: (1) trace the historical origins and conceptual roots of social ecology; (2) identify a unifying set of theoretical and methodological principles that, together, comprise the social ecological perspective; and (3) present examples of research and community interventions that illustrate how social ecology can be used to arrive at more innovative approaches to cross-disciplinary theorizing, research, and societal problem-solving. These goals of the book reflect the descriptive, analytic, and transformative facets of social ecology as a cross-disciplinary field.

Descriptive social ecology documents the material and symbolic features of human environments, characteristics of individuals and groups, and the psychological, social, and health outcomes of people’s interactions with their surroundings. Analytic social ecology applies conceptual principles and research strategies to investigate, explain, and predict how environmental circumstances affect human emotions, behavior, and well-being. Transformative social ecology translates the findings from descriptive and analytic research into strategies for mitigating real-world problems such as mental and physical illness, poverty, social and economic inequality, violence, environmental pollution, and global climate change. The transformative goals and moral concerns of social ecology emphasize the action-oriented, translational mission of the field.

Chapter 1, Discovering Social Ecology: A Personal Journey, tells how I came to write this book. In a sense, it is a culmination—I would not have been in a position to write it were it not for a combination of life events and learning experiences. I recount some of the events in my life that piqued my interest in social ecology as an approach to research, teaching, and community engagement. My development as a social ecologist is rooted in my experiences growing up in Miami, Florida, attending college at the University of Chicago, pursuing graduate studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and serving as a faculty member and administrator in the School of Social Ecology at UCI. Also in the chapter, I describe the descriptive, analytic, and transformative concerns of social ecology and explain how my view of the field builds on and extends earlier ecological research. My intent is to present the substance of social ecology from the vantage point of a former student, current teacher and scholar who has contributed to the field over several decades. As a university administrator, I worked with colleagues to articulate the research and teaching mission of Social Ecology at UCI and facilitate its approval by the University of California Regents as a School on the Irvine Campus in 1992. In writing the book, I have drawn on these and other experiences that have shaped the directions of my work in social ecology. The closing portion of the chapter outlines a model of human environments that subsumes four distinct but closely interconnected spheres: namely, our natural, built, sociocultural, and virtual (cyber-based) surroundings. The interfaces between these different domains and their combined influence on behavior, health, and ecological sustainability are emphasized throughout the book.

Chapter 2 describes the Historical Origins and Conceptual Foundations of Social Ecology, from the emergence of bioecology during the 1800s to the later development of an ecological perspective in the behavioral, social, environmental, and health sciences. I compare several branches of ecology including the Chicago School and later versions of human ecology [42,43], ecological theories in psychology, anthropology, urban planning and public health [44–51], and applications of social and human ecology to global sustainability [34,52,53] and the links between our virtual and physical worlds [54]. Similarities and differences between earlier approaches to biological, human, and social ecology are noted. These diverse strands of ecological science provide the foundations for developing a robust framework for transdisciplinary research and societal problem-solving in the Digital Age as outlined in later chapters.

Concepts and methods for describing and explaining the relationships between people and environments are presented in Chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3 introduces Core Principles of Social Ecology including: (1) the multifaceted, multilevel structure of people’s day-to-day environments and broader ecosystems; (2) systems analyses of human–environment transactions, feedback loops, equilibrium and deviation-amplifying processes, and their relevance for understanding and enhancing people’s encounters with their surroundings; (3) concepts and methods for identifying contextual influences on people at varying environmental scales; and (4) a transdisciplinary action research orientation that emphasizes translation of theory and empirical evidence into community problem-solving strategies [55]. The chapter also describes specific applications of ecological ideas and methods to gain a more complete understanding of people’s interactions with their environments. A key goal of social ecological research is to identify important contextual influences on the quality of people’s encounters with their surroundings. Dimensions of contextual scope (spatial, temporal, sociocultural, virtual) are identified and contextual mapping strategies for delimiting the system boundaries of particular target phenomena are described. The chapter also offers criteria for evaluating the validity of contextual theories.

Chapter 4 traces the Rise of the Internet and the dramatic changes in human communities wrought by digital information and communication technologies. It describes several facets of the cybersphere, a rapidly growing domain of environmental influence on individuals and groups. As our virtual surroundings have become increasingly prominent since the 1980s, humans are now confronted with complex adaptive challenges as they navigate between online and place-based communities. Some of these challenges are chronic information overload and the distractions imposed by multitasking; identity theft and other forms of cybercrime; and the Digital Divide separating information-poor and information-rich segments of the world’s population [56–59]. The proliferation of cyber technologies in the Digital Age has transformed neighborhoods, workplaces, educational settings, government institutions, scientific collaboration, health-care delivery, online dating, and more. Augmented and virtual reality, 3-D printing, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things are transfiguring our immediate and more distant milieu [60].

Understanding how people respond to and modify their surroundings requires explicit consideration of the cybersphere and its far-reaching impacts on the natural, built, and sociocultural features of environments, as well as the joint influence of these different spheres on behavior and well-being. Chapter 4 distinguishes between the near and distant regions of the cybersphere. The near cybersphere includes several categories of cyberspaces—i.e., digital communications and interactions that are salient to (perceived by) their participants, such as episodic email exchanges or more enduring virtual communities. The distant cybersphere consists of digital transmissions that lie outside the awareness of particular individuals and groups, such as data transfers between GPS satellites and smartphones or automobiles. A typology of different cyberspace categories also is presented.

Whereas the descriptive and explanatory concerns of social ecology are emphasized in Chapters 1–4, its transformative mission and normative (moral) concerns are central to Chapters 5–8. Each applies the descriptive and analytic principles of social ecology developed earlier in the book to the study and management of societal challenges including personal and public health problems (Chapter 5), social conflict and inequality (Chapter 6), global environmental change (Chapter 7), and creating sustainable and resilient communities (Chapter 8). The practical insights and applications suggested by social ecological studies are highlighted in these chapters.

Chapter 5 addresses the challenges of Promoting Personal and Public Health from the vantage points of biomedical, biopsychosocial, and social ecological models. Over the past century, biomedical theories of illness (e.g., the germ theory) have been subsumed by broader transdisciplinary conceptions of illness, disease prevention, and health promotion. Social ecology incorporates biological, psychological, and sociocultural determinants of health, as well as physical environmental health threats such as air and water pollution, ultraviolet radiation, global warming, and urban stressors such as noise and overcrowding. People’s access to restorative natural settings and well-designed neighborhoods and homes, on the other hand, are environmental resources that enhance their well-being. Several studies suggest that community rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, substance abuse, and unintentional injuries can be better understood and more effectively reduced through social ecological approaches [48,49]. The chapter also considers digital health innovations such as telemedicine and online health care, wearable and wireless biometric devices, and analyses of very large data sets to track personal and population risk factors for disease [61–63].⁵

Chapter 6 focuses on Confronting Complex Social Problems—especially the poverty conditions faced by billions of people on earth, environmental injustice, social and economic inequality, and both violent and nonviolent crime [64–66].⁶ Social problems are rooted in the diverse circumstances of people’s neighborhoods, communities, and more remote societal and global spheres (e.g., international sex trafficking syndicates, drug cartels, terrorist networks, and the Dark Web portion of the Internet, (cf., Ref. [67])). The chapter outlines distinctive qualities and categories of social problems. Although social dilemmas can be grouped into broad categories (e.g., poverty, violence, racial prejudice), many of the problems in these groupings are closely intertwined rather than independent of each other. Poverty and income inequality for example exacerbate other social problems such as interracial violence, environmental injustice, and health disparities among low-income groups. Left unabated, these conflicts can precipitate regional and global disasters—for instance, cybercrimes that destroy critical civil infrastructures, genocide, or nuclear war. The multicausal nature of these dilemmas makes them impervious to narrowly drawn disciplinary analyses. Efforts to mitigate and prevent social crises can benefit from ecological approaches combining the insights and research tools of multiple fields such as psychology, economics, sociology, criminology, social work, information science, environmental design, international relations, and public health.

Chapter 7 on Managing Global Environmental Change confronts what many scientists and policy-makers regard as our gravest ecological threats today—global climate change and its impacts on groundwater and food supplies, sea level rise and coastal flooding, ocean acidification, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and disease pandemics. The rapidity of these events has heightened public awareness of humans’ and other species’ vulnerability to planetary environmental change [12,68–70]. These global challenges are linked not only to physical and chemical processes (e.g., global temperature rise from GHGs and the destruction of atmospheric ozone by chlorofluorocarbon emissions) but also individual and collective behavior including individuals’ failure to curb residential energy and water use and their dependence on petroleum-based transit [71]. The reversal of adverse planetary changes will require multipronged ecological strategies (e.g., incentivizing sustainable behaviors and lifestyles; developing environmentally protective norms, cultural values, regulatory initiatives, and technological innovations) implemented in a coordinated fashion at local, regional, and global scales.

Chapter 8 identifies strategies for Designing Resilient and Sustainable Communities that can improve the healthfulness and livability of human settlements, from rural villages to large urban areas where most of the world’s population now resides. The concepts of resilience and sustainability are viewed at different scales as they apply to buildings, neighborhoods, communities, and regional and global ecosystems. Resilience is a system’s capacity to absorb disturbance while maintaining its essential functions and structure intact, whereas sustainability is its ability to meet current demands without sacrificing its potential to satisfy future needs [34,72–74]. The chapter also discusses research and policy initiatives to promote sustainable development such as the UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Resources Institute’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [75,76]. The UN SDGs underscore the value of balancing economic development goals with other needs, especially conserving natural resources, minimizing pollution, and ensuring that communities are socially inclusive and equitably governed [77–79]. Later sections of the chapter outline planning and design guidelines for creating sustainable communities—for instance, by incorporating abundant greenery into urban areas, engaging citizens in environmental stewardship, and encouraging nonmotorized transit (e.g., biking, walking). These strategies reduce environmental costs of buildings and urban infrastructures, promote social cohesion, and strengthen the psychological resilience and physical health of community members [80–82]. The closing portion of the chapter focuses on behavioral and educational initiatives to promote environmentally supportive values and lifestyles among individuals and groups—crucial prerequisites for ensuring societal and global sustainability.

Chapter 9 presents curricular and practice-based approaches for Educating the Next Generation of Social Ecologists. Cultivating a social ecological orientation among students requires that they internalize certain values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and analytic competencies conducive to transdisciplinary action research [55]. The chapter is organized around what I call the four T’s of social ecological training: transdisciplinary, team-based, translational, and transcultural approaches to research and practice. The first T includes mentoring strategies to nurture a transdisciplinary orientation among students so that they are able to analyze scientific and societal problems from a multilevel, systemic and contextual perspective [83]. Curricular and mentoring resources to foster cross-disciplinary fluency and competence in contextual analysis are described. Because the ability to work across disciplines is essential for social ecological inquiry, the chapter considers differences between unidisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to scholarship and community practice [84,85]. Finally, in view of the growing need for action-oriented collaboration across diverse fields, cultures, and time zones, the chapter describes new directions in translational and transcultural team science (sometimes involving thousands of coinvestigators from around the world) and their relevance to social ecological training [86–89].

Chapter 10 is an Epilogue offering my reflections on two parallel journeys: the first, my discovery of and growing involvement in social ecology over several decades and the second, the process of writing this book during a period of tumultuous environmental and political change. The world events that unfolded as I worked on the book accentuate the immediate relevance and value of social ecology as a basis for confronting global dilemmas in the Digital Age. The chapter also offers a capstone summary of overarching themes described in earlier chapters and a glimpse into the future to discern emerging directions of social ecological research and practice.

I envision this book as a resource for scholars, students, educators, government leaders, and community practitioners