Scoping Out Elements of Sociocultural Adaptation in European Urban Agriculture

This paper explores and sheds light on the elements, complexity, and dynamics of sociocultural adaptation to innovation and climate change in European Urban Agriculture. We use a scoping-exploratory review to search and unveil elements of sociocultural adaptation (SCA) in the existing literature on European urban agriculture. We categorize these elements into three main categories. This categorization can inform and be further explored, operationalized, and developed in new case-study-based research and serve as a starting point to better understand social adaptation to innovation and climate change in urban contexts, and beyond. Key results draw attention to (a) socio-technical and socio-ecological innovations as critical to sociocultural adaptation to innovation and climate change (b) some elements of SCA identified through the scoping review seem more central than others for the adaption process (c) we are left with the question of whether we need to bridge social science with biology sciences, such as human behavioral biology and neurobiology to find the answer to deeper questions about SCA.

Curiosity: A behavioral biology perspective

Since Berlyne’s groundbreaking work in the 1960’s, curiosity has been a popular topic for psychological research. Despite a rich history of research, scientists have not been able to agree upon a single definition or taxonomy of curiosity. These diverging perspectives have led to a breadth of research that has yet to be integrated under one framework. Moreover, most research on curiosity has focused on neural mechanisms and ontogenetic characteristics, while the evolutionary aspects of curiosity have received little attention. I propose that research on curiosity can benefit from an evolutionary perspective, and more broadly from a biological perspective on information-gathering behavior. In this chapter, I synthesize the literature on curiosity from the perspective of behavioral biology – i.e., Tinbergen’s four questions. The behavioral biology framework provides a powerful lens through which questions about behavior can be asked and iterative empirical work and theoretical construction can take place. In particular, I argue that evolutionary perspectives on curiosity can help identify the “joints” of nature at which curiosity may be carved. By identifying the function of different types of