This review shows that there is a fertile field of study on drought within the humanities and social sciences that produces a complex scientific understanding of droughts as socio‐natural disasters whose origins, unfolding and impacts are shaped by both social and biophysical processes. Five cases where this research stands out are reviewed: the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the droughts in the Sahel in the last third of the 20th century, desiccation as a colonial discourse, ontologies of drought and climate history. The review shows that unfortunately this body of work is largely ignored in natural science drought research. It proposes to eschew the dichotomy between drought as a physical phenomenon and its socioeconomic impacts by framing droughts as disasters. It calls for dialogue and cooperation between the sciences of nature and the sciences of society (including the humanities) to create an integrated field of drought research, in the hope that this may bring to the public debate convincing interpretations of current droughts in a dramatically changing climate.This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > World Historical Perspectives

中文翻译：

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对干旱的复杂社会环境理解：社会科学和人文学科的贡献


本综述表明，人文和社会科学领域存在着一个关于干旱的丰富研究领域，它产生了对干旱作为社会自然灾害的复杂的科学理解，其起源、发展和影响是由社会和生物物理过程决定的。回顾了这项研究的五个突出案例：1930 年代的沙尘暴、20 世纪后 30 年萨赫勒地区的干旱、作为殖民话语的干燥、干旱和气候历史的本体论。审查表明，不幸的是，自然科学干旱研究中的这一工作在很大程度上被忽视了。它建议通过将干旱视为灾害来避免干旱作为一种物理现象与其社会经济影响之间的二分法。它呼吁自然科学和社会科学（包括人文科学）之间的对话与合作，创建干旱研究的综合领域，希望这可以为公众辩论带来对当前干旱的令人信服的解释，以应对急剧变化的干旱问题。气候。本文分类为：气候、历史、社会、文化 > 世界历史视角