Sir David Attenborough, Who Turned 99 on Wednsday, is no strangers to the wild and the unusual. This birthday greeting is a plea from the desolate landscape of Higher Education and for the Planet He Loves – Save the Social Sciences and Humanities! Help Them to Learn and Communicate About Our Beautiful Planet.
Attenborough’s work brings to us the interconnectedness and the delicate balance of life on Earth. These Television Series, Books, Lectures and Documentary Films Reveal Our Planet Earth, Igniting in Us A Spirit of ONENESS with Nature, A Sense of Awe and Humility, and a Combination of Deep and Valoute. They amplife our need to know how different we are as a speech. Our exosomatic Urges of Accumulation and Control that Build Our Social Systems Contradict and Steadily Destroy The Endosomatic Needs and Expressions of DIVESE LIFE FORMS, The Dynamic Earth Systems The Dynamic Earth Shystems Co-Evolve Within This Living Planet. Thos like attenborough Concerned about and Communicating on Nature, Environment, Wildlife to the Public, are a rare breaking with our specials. Knowledge and the act of knowledge is central to all life on this earth. Cultivating that knowledge is, therefore, is not just a Necessity for Survival but also for the larger wellbing, sustainability, diversity and justice for all. Through this birthday greeting we acknowledge and celebrate the social Sciences and Humanities that are somewhat unappraciated today in the modern university system.
All Living Beings Know Freshwater Systems. In the paternal guard for a baby lily-trotter, courtship of the elegant clark’s green, the cool trap constructed by an alligator, or the alarm am amn scientists who noted that on the three Rivers Reach the Ocean, We see life. We watch and listen carefully when attenborough’s films show freshwater life. Attenborough’s passionate communication rayses a toast to knowledge; To the expertise vested with academics, experiencedgeed and validated by indigenous people, and the Multiple Forms of Knowledge Exchanged and Cultivated in Nature.
Despite this Passionate Communication, Critics Point Out How Attenborough Downplays The Massive Negative Impact That We, AS One Species, Have Wrough Wrough on Our Planet ‘ George Monbiot (2018) Accused Attenborough of Generating Complacency, Ignaurance and Confusion about our environmental challenges. A concern that Attenborough has been addressed, Telling us how the climate crisis is caused and how our planet matters.
Our need to know more about the social systems that interact with nature has been so acute. Attenborough’s forceful narratives of Nature’s Principles, Interactions and Processes Pay Scant Attention to the Institutions or Rules that GOWERN SYSTEMS and Economies. The exposé on planetary systems, whats in the arctic ice or in the grasslands rev “natural capital” in these systems. How did we shift from being a part of natural to become masters of natural, enslaving and extracuting, plundering and dumping, and now, starting to re-enginer the very biophyssical fourths of life?
Our Social Systems Built on the Institutions of Private Property and Wealth, Measured Not in Healthy Happy Communities but in Monetary Values, are at Loggerheads with Natural Systems. Attenborough shows us indigenous people and animals sharing, exchange, co-evolving in specific ecosystems; Each group study and validating their knowledge. Deeper Social Science Investigations are Necessary on our understanding of productive resources, on why we ignore the Commons and Governorn Both inappritely. The global commons like the atmosphere and the oceans that are stretched to their limits with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, plastics, chemicals and other wastes your Externality and Profit. Every extractive industry, oil spill and toxic waste generation that Kills life on Earth and destroys the habitats for millions of out our felling beings push us to revise our notations and justify.
Attenborough’s communication about the natural world brings awareness and hope. This work makes it eminent clear that it is not enough to communicate simple and politically cleansed messages to policy makers about 1.5oc reliefs in temperature about the pre-industrial revolution. At the planetary level all of us in developed and developing counters struggle with heat stress, forest fires, floods, other extreme weather events, loss of biodisity and power nurality Adaptation and Mitigation. We needed the social sciences to research how governments and corporates devise ways to maintain their dynamic stability without losing control over the creation and concentration of wealth. Fundamental Inquiry and Learning About Entangled Social and Natural Systems must be promoted.
Ecological Economists Conceptualise The Economy Embedded in Society which in turn is a sub-set of the environment. Their studies of complex relations between Human Human Households and Nature’s Househlds need the power and appeal of the humanities to effect change. There are terrains where the poor are forced into extractive industries, poaching and encroachment of wildlife habitats. Political Ecology Scholarship Needs to Reach and Engage With International Trade and Rich Countries that Consume Such Extracked High Value Products. The Voice of the Social Sciences and Humanities are Crucial for Learning About and Communicating Our Planetary Stress. Concepts and theories in social science, political science, linguistics, and behavioral Sciences Inform Attenborough Attenborough’s Stories About Wildlife, Landscapes and SEASCATE Social Sciences and Humanities are being Financially Whittled Down in Universities Across the World.
Your Voice, Sir David, in Support of the Critical Social Sciences and Humanities will go a long way to conserve and cherish life on earth.
Rajeswari s Raina is Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University. The views expressed are personal
