Social Impact Analysis

An Applied Anthropology Manual

Laurence R. Goldman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000323962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book addresses the nature, purpose and processes associated with social impact analysis. Because resource development projects occur in human as well as ecological environments, stakeholders - landowners, companies and governments - are compelled to ensure that the benefits of any project are maximized while the negative risks are minimized. Achieving such objectives means implementing programs which monitor and evaluate the ongoing effects of a project on the social and cultural lives of the impacted populace. This book aims to provide a teaching and training resource for students, social scientists (anthropologists, sociologists, human geographers, environmentalists, engineers, etc.) and indigenous personnel and operators who are tasked with community affairs programs in those countries where resource development projects are implemented. The constituent chapters provide how-to guides and frameworks that are generously illustrated with case studies drawn variously from North America and the Asia-Pacific region. Topics addressed include Legal Frameworks and Compliance Procedures, Social Mapping, Environmental Reports, Social and Economic Impact Studies, Social Monitoring Techniques, Project Development, Statistical Packages and Report Production.This book is unique in so far as it seeks to prioritize application over theory. Moreover, it is the first training resource that is sensitive to non-western indigenes' need to assimilate and apply skills engendered by Western countries.

-1- Introduction

Laurence Goldman and Scott Baum

Introduction

This book is concerned with an area of applied anthropology broadly defined as social impact assessment (SIA). Such studies are driven by a requirement, most usually of a legal nature, to prospectively evaluate types of social and cultural change likely to follow some interventionist programme, project or scheme. Importantly, the findings of such inquiries are harnessed to policy and planning decision-making in a manner that attempts therefore to anticipate and minimize adverse impacts. We are alerted here to the fact that SIAs are generally forward-looking in nature, highly evaluative, and seek to manage change responsibly by articulating how the findings and recommendations of any study can be translated into preferred and sustainable projects.

The contributors to this volume have at least two things in common. First, they are all variously practitioners, professionals or pedagogues in the field of SIA. Second, they all share the opinion that there is a need for a unified resource text on this genre of study that prioritizes the pragmatic tasks of doing SIA, and does so from the perspective of first-time students, indigenous and government personnel, developers, consultants and social scientists. While some two decades ago it may have been appropriate for Finsterbusch to pass comment that 'ethnographic studies ... should definitely have a larger role in SIAs' (1981:9), today such advice merely expresses what is conventional wisdom. Why should this be the case?

In the intervening period global exploration and exploitation of natural resources in the world have continued at an inexorable pace. This process has unsurprisingly been conterminous with increased public and political sensitivities to issues of native title, cultural heritage, environmental damage, and the general place and role of ethnicity as an important world resource. At the same time, anthropology has itself emerged from the reflexivity of the post-modern era with a renewed understanding and focus on what it means to study anthropology, to be an anthropologist, and to practise anthropology in a way relevant to the demands of the 21st century. Succinctly stated, the anthropologist/sociologist of tomorrow will work and study in a profoundly transformed set of institutional relationships from that of their founding predecessors. Two trajectories in particular can usefully be isolated:

1. Academic institutions that are compelled to implement rationalist economic policies in the face of dwindling financial support will require the social sciences to increasingly pursue mutually beneficial partnerships with external agencies such as industry and government. This is both in the interest of 'becoming relevant', and as a perceived means of attracting outside funding. Attached consulting wings will become the norm to maintain independent financial viability and competitiveness. Increasingly, departments will look to mount short-term courses which can train non-anthropologists, resource operators and indigenes in other countries in impact analysis. This is not to suggest that expediency should determine what anthropologists do, but merely to indicate that there will be institutional demands and pressures which shape the survival of anthropology as an academic profession within universities - 'Scholarship cannot survive in an ivory tower'(Adams, 1971:335).
2. There will be related pressures for increased interdisciplinary research, teaching and publication as reorganization in academic institutions --at the university, school, faculty or departmental level - amalgamates anthropology with other behavioural or social-science disciplines. More so than in the past, degree programmes will incorporate both and stress the importance of acquiring cross-disciplinary skills.

The combined effects of the above processes of change can be briefly charted as follows. On the one hand, and most especially in countries such as Australia and the US, anthropologists are now experiencing a rapid rise in demand for their expertise as consultants to resource developers, governments, local land councils, indigenous bodies, and various national and international aid, fiscal and legal agencies. The private-enterprise sector of anthropology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the last decade. On the other hand, those who trained during the 1970-80s generally attended universities at which curriculums in applied anthropology were either non-existent or newly emerging. These professionals who sought to engage in applied or SIA-type work would undoubtedly have encountered steep self-learning curves. By contrast, and for all of the reasons alluded to above, it is clear that the anthropology graduate of the new millennium will be, and will demand to be, equipped with applied research skills.

In many ways, then, a focus on social impact analysis is timely. While it clearly looks to the past in terms of acknowledging the importance a conventional ethnographic study has for the task of evaluating change, of importing and remaining sensitive to what we conveniently gloss as 'culture', it also looks to the future by stressing the compelling case for inter-disciplinary teamwork. 'The task of any serious assessment is almost surely beyond the ken of any single individual practitioner or profession' (Porter & Rossini, 1983:6). As a multi-task endeavour, an SIA may well team the anthropologist/sociologist with human or political geographers, geographical scientists, policy analysts, educationists, environmentalists, medical and public health specialists, engineers, economists, demographers or human resource analysts to name but a few.

For the initiate anthropologist, a paradigmatic shift occurs in work practices as a response to these new sets of demands and constraints:

1. He/she must adapt to working in a multi-skilled team where the parametric indices to be quantitatively or qualitatively measured by others will in part be critically determined by what the anthropologist reveals about the socio-cultural organization of the community.
2. The analyst will no longer be primarily driven by critical theory concerns in the discipline but by the requirement to adapt his/her knowledge of a social milieu to the practical and problem-solving tasks of forecasting or predicting change, of evaluating risk and mitigation strategies, of formulating impact monitoring systems, and of providing a voice for the impacted community in the evaluation process.
3. There will be a premium on writing in a clear, non-technical, non-jargon-infested prose so that the findings are both readable and widely accessible. That is, for example, the science of kinship/descent has to be rendered comprehensible to the non-specialist with only the amount of detail given that is absolutely relevant to the task at hand. A substituted vernacular of'bottom-lines, cost-benefits and sustainability' is henceforth segued to the report format of executive summaries, dot-points and sub-section recommendations as the conventional style of report production.
4. While nevertheless conscious that one's report will itself become part of the literary resource for a given area, it will often remain a non-refereed item considered of lesser significance in any publication profile. Indeed, few opportunities for publication of SIA reports as documents in their own right may exist.
5. Where the work is undertaken on a paid basis by a sponsoring organization that is also a stakeholder in the project, the risks of compromising one's position of neutrality in the community is increased with all the attendant consequences this can have for future research there.

These implications begin to beg questions about the role of SIA as critical practice, about the relationships of patrons and clients in the SIA context, and about the ethical dimensions to practising this kind of anthropology that can compromise the integrity of the researcher and breaches conventional codes of disciplinaiy practice.

While more than a decade ago some might have viewed SIA work as somewhat tangential to the theory-building inquiries of anthropology, the processes of social and institutional change alluded to above have effected a narrowing of the chasm between what is now peripheral and what is core in the discipline. In this regard, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that developing programme courses in environmental and social impact work is for most anthropology departments in the world an inexorable (if not mandatory) trajectory.

This volume was conceived in part as an attempt to address the need for a manual which would discuss and present in a 'how to' format the framework of tasks - for example, screening, scoping and assessing --associated with undertaking social impact assessment research. That is, it seeks to explain what is meant by impact mitigation and risk management; why the ramifications of alternative 'with-and-without' project scenarios have to be considered; what makes up a baseline study and how this can constitute an impact monitoring and management system for post-intervention analysis; and how social mapping helps identify the cross-cutting variables used to index social impact and feeds into the sectoral evaluation studies of, say, health, education, governance and communication. In tackling these issues, the contributors frequently illuminate how rational problem-solving can be achieved and, further, what kinds of resources the analyst(s) will require to complete the job. This volume is distinguished from other environmental and social impact assessment resources (cf. Bowles, 1981; Branch, Hooper, Thompson & Creighton, 1984;Burdge, 1998;Carley&Bustelo, 1984; Erickson, 1994; Finsterbusch, 1980; Finsterbusch & Wolf, 1981; Leistritz & Ekstrom, 1981; Leistritz & Murdock, 1981; Rossini & Porter, 1983; Soderstrom, 1981) in respect to both focus and priorities. These can summarily be stated as follows:

The papers in this volume exclusively engage the human rather than the biophysical/natural environment. While accepting that these are intertwined and co-dependent fields of assessment in any SIA or environmental impact study (EIS) - most especially where developments affect an environment that constitutes a residential and subsistence base for communities - the authors restrict themselves to discussing what are manifestly social indices of impact.

There is very little enmeshment per se with the profound ethical, theoretic or methodological conundrums that are part of the ongoing discourse and development in SIA research. Readers will therefore not find detailed discussion of multivariate or risk analysis, model building or forms of statistical or computational packages that could serve to tabulate or organize data. This is not, however, to suggest that the issue of methodology has been inappropriately ignored. Rather, the authors have prioritized the twin tasks of providing: (a) relevant SIA case synopses as illustrations of how problem-solving occurred in specific instances, or how research designs were adapted to given situations; and (b) examples of research tools such as questionnaires, logframe matrices and monitoring forms which can be adapted or customized by prospective practitioners. Research techniques as discussed by the authors here augment the step-by-step demonstrations of those tasks constituting each component phase of an SIA.

The contributions in this volume collectively reflect various sequential tasks depicted in the generic model (see Figure 1.1) of the SIA phases. The intention was to provide, within the limitations of a single volume, an overview of the practical requirements of doing an SIA.

Aside from the issue of having to become acquainted with the specific cant or terms of art in which SIA reports have to be fashioned, for the first-time student entering this field of inquiry the experience can prove daunting.

Firstly, the majority of reference papers are inevitably marked by a proliferation of tree/flow diagrams, models, route-maps, steps, pathways and signposts. Often these can appear both overwhelming in detail and simply variations on a theme. They are not, however, gratuitous. Because the social scientist effectively addresses the total realm of socio-cultural phenomena - the physical, aesthetic, recreational, psychological and institutional - subsuming unlimited types of indices within umbrella categories is no easy task. Moreover, as Simpson indicates, each of the selected social factors may require assessment or evaluation along the parameters, for example, of reversibility, probability, duration, magnitude, distribution or scope.

Secondly, the novice will be confronted by a plethora of acronyms, country-specific regulations and assessment process terminologies that are not always explicitly clarified for the beginner. In addition to the generally used terms such as SIA (social impact assessment), SEIS (social and economic impact study), EIA (environmental impact assessment), EIS (environmental impact statement), ERMP (environmental review and management programme), EMP (environmental management plan), EPA (environmental planning acts), and SEA (strategic environmental assessment), a welter of alternative impact-related acronyms have been generated in the literature such as CIA (community impact assessment) or IIA (integrated impact assessment, cf. Rossini & Porter, 1983).

Thirdly, there is the now proliferating World Wide Web (WWW), which includes sites that provide downloadable teaching and resource guides --e.g. United Nations Program EIA Training Resource Manual (http:// www.erin.gov.au/portfolio/epg/eianet/manual/) - or which have registered Impact Associations defining or providing 'best practice procedures/ protocols', updated information on current projects, conferences etc., list of members, associated journal publications and links (http:// www.soc.titech.ac.jp/uem/eia/impactassess.html) to other international agencies - e.g. International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA: http://www.iaia/org/), Manchester University (http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ EIA/) or in Australia the EIA network (http://www.erin.gov.au). In addition to the professional organizations and codes of ethics which may by consent govern the researcher's work, these resources often function to co-ordinate the disparate SIA work that goes on around the globe

Fourthly, there will be the perennial problems of how to identify and isolate from the complex skein of connections, and endlessly dynamic interrelationships, variables of social behaviour which might constitute beginning and end points in causal chains. On the one hand, SIAs rarely retrospectively test initial hypotheses or forecasts. Moreover, the variables one commenced research with are themselves changed once an intervention and its impacts occur. On the other hand, these impact reactions may trigger primary, secondary or even tertiary waves of changes rendering the task of crystal-ball gazing precarious. Even here, the unpractised researcher will be bemused by advice to delineate potential futures or scenarios in terms of such finely discriminat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Social Impact Assessment
• Part II Scoping
• Part III Assessment
• Part IV Monitoring
• Index