Chris High

Shadow spaces for social learning: a relational understanding of adaptive capacity to climate change within organisations

Recent UK government policy on climate change, and wider policy movement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, emphasise the building of adaptive capacity. But what are the institutional constraints that shape capacity to build adaptive organisations? The authors synthesise theory from social learning and institutional aspects of multilevel environmental governance to help unpack the patterns of individual and collective action within organisations that can enhance or restrict organisational adaptive capacity in the face of abrupt climate change. Theoretical synthesis is grounded by empirical work with a local dairy farmers group and two supporting public sector bodies that are both local actors in their own rights and which also shape the operating environment for other local actors (the Environment Agency and the Welsh Assembly and Assembly-sponsored public bodies). Providing space within and between local organisations for individuals to develop private as well as officially sanctioned social relationships is supported as a pathway to enable social learning. It is also a resource for adaptation that requires little financial investment but does call for a rethinking of the personal skills and working routines that are incentivised within organisations.

The politics of performance: methodological challenges of researching children’s experiences of childhood through the lens of participatory video

This paper examines the value of participatory video (PV) for exploring childhood and children’s experiences within the context of a larger research project which sought to examine the everyday lives of residents in a neighbourhood identified as ‘disadvantaged’. Participatory methods are often premised on ameliorating the gap between the concepts and models of researchers and those of individuals and communities. However, within PV, there has been much less focus on the process of participation and its implications for research outcomes. This paper addresses this gap in order to explore how the children, researchers and residents co‐produced a visual narrative about life in the neighbourhood, and in particular, how a methodological focus on PV as process makes visible its potential to offer valuable insights not only into children’s social connectivities, relationships and friendships but also into the theorising of children’s identities and childhoods.

Building agency through participatory video: insights from the experiences of young women participants in India

Abstract Participatory video (PV) is being used by several nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in many different countries. It is often assumed to be a non-problematic process that enables less powerful groups to gain power and participate in social change. While scholars have for long critiqued participatory approaches, it is only in recent years that academic and professional debates that challenge assumptions about PV have emerged. This paper adds to those debates, while focusing primarily on critiquing the PV practice. Drawing on the concepts of participation, agency, and gender, it examines how the agency of less powerful groups can be affected over a period of time as they participate in PV projects initiated by NGOs. It discusses these issues through a case study of a long-term PV project done with young women in a community in Hyderabad (India), undertaken during a doctoral research. It draws attention to the several aspects of a long-term PV project that impact agency-development. The paper argues that while PV can enable participants to gain agency, it is equally challenging to do so in the presence of power relations.