Jönsson, Jimmy and Marald, Erland and Lundmark, Tomas
(2021).
The shifting society syndrome: Values, baselines, and Swedish forest conservation in the 1930s and 2010s.
Conservation science and practice. 3
, e506
[Research article]
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Abstract
This study addresses a response to shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), a syndrome implying that land managers' acceptance of environmental change declines gradually due to lack of historical knowledge. Some actions to counteract SBS are haunted by methodological problems associated with measuring natural states and ignoring societal effects on ideas of naturalness. To balance methodological discussions of SBS, this study analyzes the social contexts of baseline demarcations historically. It compares baselines in two Swedish forest conservation debates-about the Fiby forest in the 1930s and the Ojnare forest in the 2010s-focusing on scalable and unscalable values. To operationalize shifting societal criteria for baseline demarcations, we introduce the "shifting society syndrome" concept. The study identifies several societal shifts and shows that Fiby's baseline was shaped by the scalable value of age and the nonscalable values of uniqueness and Swedishness, and Ojnare's by the scalable value of biodiversity and the nonscalable values of uniqueness and wildness. We argue that values, scalability, and historical change are crucial variables in the practice of demarcating baselines and that intellectual history is a useful tool for methodological self-reflection in SBS research.
Authors/Creators: | Jönsson, Jimmy and Marald, Erland and Lundmark, Tomas | ||||||
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Title: | The shifting society syndrome: Values, baselines, and Swedish forest conservation in the 1930s and 2010s | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Conservation science and practice | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2021 | ||||||
Volume: | 3 | ||||||
Article number: | e506 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 11 | ||||||
Publisher: | WILEY | ||||||
ISSN: | 2578-4854 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 4 Agricultural Sciences > 401 Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries > Forest Science | ||||||
Keywords: | Fiby, forest conservation, forest history, naturalness, Ojnare, scalability, shifting baseline syndrome, values | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-113290 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-113290 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 25856 | ||||||
Faculty: | S - Faculty of Forest Sciences | ||||||
Department: | (S) > Dept. of Forest Ecology and Management | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 18 Oct 2021 06:26 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 18 Oct 2021 06:31 |
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