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Summary Theoretical framework Social Impact Assesment (SIA)
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Theoretical framework of Social Impact Assessment (SIA) course at the RUG. Used as theoretical framework for paper.
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Social: impacts, assessment, management, and licence to operateBefore an analyses of social impacts can be done a clear definition of what social impacts
constitute should be determined. Social impacts can be shorty defined as everything that affects
people that is caused by or linked to a certain project (Vanclay, et al., 2014). This can either
about perceptions (cognitive) or physical impacts on individuals, families/households, social
groups, communities or societies (Vanclay, 2002). Armour (1990) categorizes social impacts
in: - people’s way of life (daily life) - their culture (shared beliefs customs and values) - their
community (cohesion, stability, character, services and facilities). In his paper Vanclay (2002)
assesses this and other conceptualisations of social impacts and proposes seven categories with
88 corresponding indicators. The categories include impacts on: - Health and wellbeing, -
quality of the living environment - economic impacts - cultural impacts - family and community
impacts - institutional, political and equity impacts - gender relations. Though in his own
critique Vanclay (2002) states that a checklist is not beneficial for analysing the drivers behind
the impacts and that this categorisation can have a Westerns bias. Instead social impacts should
be obtained within the local communities. However, the list does provide a checking framework
for the consideration of different types of impacts in the assessment of social impacts and a
general framework for categorising the social impacts as expressed by the different
stakeholders.
Both Slootweg et al (2001) and Vanclay (2002), in their conceptualisation of social impacts
,make a distinction between (social) change processes and (social) impacts. The framework in
figure 1 connects environmental impacts with social impacts in a similar scheme. The scheme
starts with the planned intervention, for instance a new gas drilling site. The changes and
impacts of both the social setting (a person, household, community etc.) and physical
environment are being separated in this framework. A change process is seen as the mechanisms
that can lead to a physical or social (or both) impact. The social impacts are what is truly
experienced by the person(s), communities or other social configurations as impact and the
social change processes can be seen as the mechanism that can lead to social impacts (Vanclay,
2002; Slootweg et al. 2001). As example declining population is not an impact itself but this
process can lead to multiple different social impacts. Slootweg et al. (2002) also discuss a
‘social filter’ similar to the landscape filter, a filter that removes the potential impacts because
of the particular characteristics of the social setting. But because of the diverse and
unpredictable nature of these social settings no categorical filters can be made. However both
Slootweg et al. (2001) and Vanclay (2002) state that all person(s), communities or other social
configurations have certain social filters of their own that can make them either more
vulnerable, susceptible, resilient or not-susceptible to change processes and/or impacts.
Vanclay (2002) categorizes possible social change processes into multiple categories: -
Demographic processes - Economic processes - Geographical processes - Institutional and legal
processes - Emancipatory and empowerment processes - Sociocultural processes and Other
processes.
Regarding impacts a distinction can be made between direct and indirect social impacts. Indirect
impacts are the result of changes of and impacts on the physical environment and direct impacts
are the result of social change processes that are directly caused by the intervention (Slootweg,
et al., 2001). Also cumulative impacts can occur when change processes or impact of the
intervention or those of other phenomena strengthen each others effect (Franks, et al., 2012).
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