Art Dewulf

Do scale frames matter? Scale frame mismatches in the decision making process of a 'mega farm' in a small Dutch village

Scale issues are an increasingly important feature of complex sustainability issues, but they are mostly taken for granted in policy processes. However, the scale at which a problem is defined as well as the scale at which it should be solved are potentially contentious issues. The framing of a problem as a local, regional, or global problem is not without consequences and influences processes of inclusion and exclusion. Little is known about the ways actors frame scales and the effect of different scale frames on decision making processes. This paper addresses the questions that different scale frames actors use and what the implications of scale frames are for policy processes. It does so by analyzing the scale frames deployed by different actors on the establishment of a so-called new mixed company or mega farm and the related decision making process in a Dutch municipality. We find that actors deploy different and conflicting scale frames, leading to scale frame mismatches. We conclude that scale frame mismatches play an important role in the stagnation of the decision making process.

'Doing Differences': The Emergence of Differences in Issue Framing in Multi-Actor Conversations

In this paper we analyze how differences in issue framing emerge in multi-stakeholder conversations. From a discursive approach to issue framing we draw on conversational studies of disagreement, difference and conflict to build up a theoretical framework. This leads us to understand differences in issue framing as relationally significant, sequentially relevant and discursively constructed incompatibilities between two or more issue elements. In the study of multi-stakeholder conversations in the context of natural resources management in Southern Ecuador, we analyzed 8 difference emergence episodes during three interaction moments. We show that the discursive structure of the difference-initiating speaking turns is multi-layered. The differences emerge by working cautiously towards a specific but clear challenge and then adding further challenging layers of implications, and can be understood as oriented to simultaneously being to the point and being relevant. As was the case in 4 of the studied difference emergence episodes, this multi-layered structure can be exploited by interrupting a divergent movement in order to prevent the emergence of a difference. Finally, the interaction contexts in which the differences emerge can be characterized as asymmetrical, putting the burden of the risky business of initiating differences on the shoulders of the weaker parties, who proceed very prudently and produce generally weak signals of difference.