“Resource Dependency and
Diversity: From Findings to
Metaphors (and Back Again?)”
Richard C. Stedman
Department of Natural Resources
Cornell University
Road Map…
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Building blocks: Bill’s work on resource
dependence and well being of rural communities
The evolution of inquiry
Comparisons
 New indicators
 Methodological and definitional challenges
 Changing reality conditions in rural places
 Distribution issues: “moving beyond the mean”
 Definitions: well being + dependence
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A couple of ‘half baked’ ideas
Some Key Pieces…
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Social Impact Assessment (ARS 1986)
Addictive economies (Rural Sociology 1992)
Boomtown’s Youth (ASR, 1984)
Criminal behavior in boomtowns (Rural Soc 1991)
40 years of spotted owls: (Sociological Perspectives 1998)
“Well, duh…indeed??”
Here we go again…
Enter the Marcellus Shale…
Major Natural Gas Shale Basins
How is the Marcellus Different than
Traditional Gas Development?
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Deeper than historic wells
Horizontal Drilling
Non-traditional Formation
Requires Hydro-fracturing to
allow gas to travel in rock
Takes longer, requires more
people, more resources
Brand new boomtowns!
On the other hand…
Maybe we have made some progress
after all…discourse is broader
The Work Evolves
Canadian Forest Service Years…
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Convergence of RD/WB equation with Montreal
Process C&I and CCFM
Initial curiosity re some basic questions on forestdependent communities
Comparisons
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Across industries
Across regions
Across indicators of well being:
Over time
Within communities
More…
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Definitions
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Well-being
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‘process’ indicators and subjective indicators of well being
Locally derived indicators
Resource dependence
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employment in forest harvest/processing sector
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Jobs versus income
% versus base
Employment in non-timber sectors –non timber forest products,
forest related tourism,
Non-employment dependence
Transitioning rural landscapes: tourism dependence?
At some point, this “evolution”
started spinning off into the
“half-baked ideas” stage
Half-baked idea #1…
Can resource dependence be
“positive” instead of negative?
The terms and findings
of resource dependence:
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Terms: “addiction, reliance, craving” imply vulnerability
or weakness
So do a lot of the findings, when
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Measured (mostly) via arms length economic indicators:
employment or income tied to the extraction, processing, and
distribution of natural resources.
Conceptually and methodologically at issue…
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dependence as “psychological state” conflated with arms
length aggregate indicators
Who depends? Do counties (our usual unit of analysis really
“depend”? Or do people depend?
A positive dependence?
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Another class of synonyms for psychological
dependence: trust, confidence, belief, faith that imply
something positive: dependence versus dependability?
Can this base of confidence--wherever it comes from-give a community a stronger sense of agency, and
resilience?
Need to examine actions and
psychologies at multiple scales
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A conceptual typology of dependence
Psychological
(pos / neg)
Individual
Community/Aggregate
Attitudes:
Social representations, community
identity:
Negative: “we are” backward, with
few other options, stuck.
Negative: Risk aversion,
unwillingness to change
Behavioral
(pos / neg)
Positive: attachment, biophilia
Positive: shared vision, collective
identity, community as special
place
Individual actions:
Secondary data: indicators of
community action
Negative: disinvestments in human
capital based on faith in industry
or lack of awareness of options
Negative: disinvestments in alt
development strategies
Positive: use “faith” in the resource
as a launching pad for creativity,
entrepreneurship, etc.
Positive: community-driven
initiatives: resource based
development strategies, CBRM
Core of emerging research…
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What affects where in the typology an individual
and/or a community is likely to fall?
Based on:
 What is depended on: characteristics of the resource
 Level of analysis: a particular community, a set of
relations between communities; a region?
 The type of indicator: social psych or secondary
data?
 The “type” of location: conduct research in a wider
variety of settings that include the rural-urban
interface and major metropolitan centers.
 Variation within a level
Half-baked idea, #2…
Resource Dependence
and Diversity…?
Economic diversity and rural
communities
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Diversity counter-posed to resource dependence, single
industry towns (“resource curse” of overspecialization)
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“Resource dependent communities need to diversify”
Rural development plans…diversity assumed to…
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Mitigate population loss, poverty during economic downturn
(general or sector-specific)
Help achieve stability, growth, and/or resilience
Contrary to economic theory of comparative advantage and
specialization?
‘Borrowed’ from Ecology:
Diversity ~ Resilience?
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In ecology, more diverse systems assumed to be better
positioned to respond to unspecified system shocks
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Respond to “unknown unknowns”: diversity as risk reduction
strategy when uncertainty is high.
A few issues to discuss…
That are pretty core to science
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Measurement: even ecology hasn’t settled on
the ‘best’ way to measure diversity
Evidence: that diversity = resilience is a little
sketchy, even in ecology
Translation: between ecology and socialeconomic systems
Parameters of Diversity in Ecology
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translate in your mind a rough
Diversity at what level?
analogy
between ecological and
Species level (most common)
Subspecies level: genetic / phenotypical
economic diversity
Beyond species: interactions/functional relationships (emergent)
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What geography?
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Alpha (within given habitat)
Beta (diversity of habitats—landscape---transition zones between habitats)
Gamma (geographical: region or larger)
How to count?
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Richness: number of species present (‘counting’—doesn’t take into
account how distributed)
Relative abundance (species evenness): how are the individuals in a
population distributed across species?
Niche occupation
Rarity/scarcity—not all species ‘count’ equally
Moving to Economic Diversity
subtitle… ‘fun with analogies’
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“Richness” : total number of different economic
sectors represented in a given region
“Evenness”: relative distribution across sectors,
of employment and/or income
Diversity versus Diversification:
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Most empirical work looks at the effect of diversity
(state) rather the process of diversification
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Are diverse places different (vis a vis outcomes) than
diversifying places?
Pushing the ecological analogies
a little farther…
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“Endangered” species/sectors: ecology privileges rare
species: does this make sense for:
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Economic sectors?
Types of communities?
“Exotic versus native” species/sectors
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We privilege species that “belong” rather than those that
have been introduced (or have expanded their range at the
expense of another).
Analogy for economic sectors?
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seems that in community development, we usually call this
“innovation” and are supremely untroubled by it
Habitat boundaries and system ‘openness’ (species
move through habitats)
What does the economic diversity
literature miss?
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‘Distance’ or functional differentiation:
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compounding versus offsetting effects:
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Hierarchies among species/sectors ~ trophic levels:
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social changes producing linked effects
obviously goofy to say there ought to be as many grizzly
bears as mice
same (but less obvious) with economic sectors?
Ignore regional differences in the capacity to maintain
diversity
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Some ecosystems “naturally” more diverse than others (e.g.,
arctic vs the tropics); is the same true for socio-economic
systems?
Another key difference:
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Community diversity: potential for better calibration, are more
diverse places “better” places by a wider range of criteria.
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Ecosystems = problems with endogeneity: survival,
expansion/encroachment: “better systems” manage to persist and expand
their range
Similar criteria invoked re human communities: persistence and growth,
economic indicators (income, employment, population)
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Subjective indicators
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Are more diverse communities ‘better’ communities? Do people enjoy
them more? Are they more eager to stay? Do they more fully participate
in the life of the community? Which people?
Thanks Bill.