Andrea Torvinen

Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security

Significance Climate-induced disasters are impacting human well-being in ever-increasing ways. Disaster research and management recognize and emphasize the need to reduce vulnerabilities, although extant policy is not in line with this realization. This paper assesses the extent to which vulnerability to food shortage, as a result of social, demographic, and resource conditions at times of climatic challenge, correlates with subsequent declines in social and food security. Extreme climate challenges are identified in the prehispanic US Southwest and historic Norse occupations of the North Atlantic Islands. Cases with such different environmental, climatic, demographic, and cultural and social traditions allow us to demonstrate a consistent relationship between vulnerability and consequent social and food security conditions, applicable in multiple contexts. This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the “weight” of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy.

Marking and making differences: Representational diversity in the U.S. Southwest

Abstract Diversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, as is recognized in recent social science literature. Archaeology can provide insights into how diverse social situations play out over the long term. There are many kinds of diversities, and we propose representational diversity as a distinct category. Representational diversity specifically concerns how and whether differences are marked or masked materially. We investigate several archaeological sequences in the U.S. Southwest. Each began with the coming together of populations that created situations of unprecedented social diversity; some resulted in conflict, others in long-term stability. We trace how representational diversity changed through these sequences. Specifically, we review the transregional Kayenta migration to the southern Southwest and focus empirical analyses on regional processes in the Cibola region and on painted ceramics. Results show that, initially, representational diversity increased above and beyond that caused by the combination of previously separate traditions as people marked their differences. Subsequently, in some instances, the diversity was replaced by widespread homogeneity as the differences were masked and mitigated. Although the social causes and effects of diversity are many and varied, long-term stability and persistence is associated with tolerance of a range of diversities.

Diversity, reciprocity, and the emergence of equity-inequity tradeoffs

Reciprocity is a core institution that allows diverse individuals to engage in collective action. Collective action is essential to meet the goals of sustainable development. The twin goals of sustainable development are to protect the well-being of individuals and ecosystems in ways that are socially just. These twin goals constitute the win-win paradigm. However, tradeoffs in socialecological systems may limit collective action and, thus, make the win-win paradigm difficult to achieve. To understand how and why this is the case, we need a better understanding of tradeoffs. In this paper, we use a model of specialization and exchange in an agroecological system to propose a typology of tradeoffs: functional, robustness-vulnerability, and equity-inequity tradeoffs. We especially focus on how the interaction of diverse capaibilities, resource abundance, and reciprocity in a social-agroecological system generates equity-inequity tradeoffs. In our model, a simple diversity of capabilities (even among actors with the same goals) who engage in reciprocal exchange produces equity-inequity tradeoffs. Equity-inequity tradeoffs underlie conflicts of interest and may favor winner take all scenarios, as opposed to win-wins. However, our analysis is not all bad news. If resources are abundant enough, we observe the potential for qualified win-wins.