Open Collections

Worldview and resource development conflict

University of British Columbia

It is hypothesized that there is a relationship between an individual’s underlying worldview and how supportive that individual is of resource development. There are five goals in this research: 1. to define worldview and explain its relevance to resource development conflict 2. to demonstrate that understanding history (of mining and of philosophy) is vital to defining and understanding the worldviews that are active in resource development 3. to propose an interrogatory methodology for defining a person’s operational worldview with respect to resource development conflict 4. to propose a methodology for evaluating the research data to conclude whether the hypothesis has merit in understanding and resolving resource development conflicts 5. to demonstrate, if possible, via a case study that worldview differences can be more fundamental to resource development conflicts than environmental or social issues What is worldview and why do some worldviews result in more creative societies? The formation of western philosophical schools of thought from the 18th Century until today is summarized and a survey of the literature on sustainability, poverty and aid and standards of corporate social responsibility is included. The research data to test the hypothesis was collected via an internet questionnaire in English and Spanish as well as administered one-on-one in the small Peruvian community of Tambogrande which is and was affected by resource development. The answers to the 143 questions from the 297 respondents were combined into common “themes” or variables in order to identify correlations in the data. Factor and cluster analyses techniques were employed to isolate those themes or variables which correlated to one of two variables which dealt directly with resource development and multivariate linear regressions were undertaken to test the correlations and develop predictive equations. It is concluded from this research that, for the respondents involved, worldview is predictive of attitudes towards resource development making available useful tools to assist in such development. Such tools may: • predict whether stakeholders to a resource development will become antagonistic • reduce the tension of resource conflict and allow new paths to resolution

Text

2014-10-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50682

Mining Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/