Sue Oreszczyn

A systems approach to the research of people's relationships with English hedgerows

Although complexity is often recognised as a feature of landscapes, any assessment of their value and prescriptions for management are usually based on a narrow, reductionist framework, involving either just wildlife or people but rarely both. This paper demonstrates how systems ideas have been applied to provide a broader approach to researching hedgerows in the UK, drawing on the idea that holistic thinking brings together multiple views of stakeholders so as to identify future options. Hedgerows in the UK are valued for ecological, functional, historical, visual and personal reasons and they are perceived very differently by those with direct or indirect relationships with them. The cultural dimensions of hedgerows and their implications for future hedged landscapes were investigated through the collection and exploration of different stakeholder perspectives. Based on the findings of this research, it is argued that considering both the objective and the subjective hedgerow values of stakeholders offers opportunities to examine the different boundaries to their systems of interest and so help to include and accommodate complex human factors.

GM crops in the United Kingdom: precaution as process

Although the United Kingdom (UK) has no explicit ban on genetically modified (GM) crops, by mid-2005 cultivation of GM crops has uncertain prospects. The UK has taken a ‘precautionary approach’ that has engaged policy actors in a participatory process going beyond usual regulatory procedures. It has involved a less formal procedure than that advocated by the European Commissions guidelines on precaution. Attempts to accommodate diverse perspectives in a policy decision for GM crops have engaged policy actors in a learning process that raised broader questions concerning agriculture more generally. It has highlighted the need for flexible policy measures, particularly at the European level. However, this process may undermine, rather than help to achieve, the stated Government aim, which is to restore public confidence in science as the basis for policy making. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Engaging cooperative research

Cooperative research involves upstream engagement of practitioners, introducing diverse knowledges and expertise in ways that can, in theory at least, generate new knowledge that is socially robust and publicly accountable. And yet, judging cooperative research solely in terms of accountability may underplay the transformative and nonaccountable/nonconvergent nature of research—the production, in other words, of the new when collectives are drawn together. Using examples from research that sought to provide environmental civil society organisations (CSOs) with the resources to shape cooperative research, this paper argues that cooperative research may not simply mark an extension of public engagement with science but can also seed an anticipatory and thus creative research process. For cooperative research to play this role there is a need to highlight the human and nonhuman attachments that underpin cooperative research activity. We argue that such activity might best have as its aim the empowerment, not simply of participants, but of the political situations that CSOs can help to foment.

Challenging unsustainable development through research cooperation

Although the concept “sustainable development” has scope to open up societal futures, this opportunity has been limited by dominant agendas promoting capital-intensive innovations. Civil society organisations (CSOs) have criticised these agendas, especially through campaign activities, while also intervening in these issues through research activity. Such interventions were extended by our project, “Co-operative Research on Environmental Problems in Europe”, which brought together CSOs and academics as partners to carry out joint research. Focusing on agricultural practices and innovations, the project analysed divergent accounts of sustainable agriculture. Through academic-CSO cooperation, critical concepts from CSOs (e.g. agrofuels and agroecology) became perspectives for research and for wider stakeholder involvement. These concepts helped to deepen critical analysis of the EUs dominant innovation agenda, which is seen by many CSOs as unsustainable development – perpetuating sustainability problems in the name of addressing them. Itself a societal intervention, the research process also strengthened CSOs’ efforts to intervene in EU policy frameworks, to challenge dominant innovation agendas and to promote alternatives.

A Systemic approach to scoping of factors influencing more sustainable land use in Herefordshire

Abstract Defining and putting into practice sustainable land use is a complex, systemic problem. Systems models and techniques were used in a study of Herefordshire to clarify the situation and identify the potential for a more locally focused, learning-based approach to land use. Issues included: (i) uncertainty about the boundary of a ‘system of sustainable Herefordshire land use’; (ii) the complexity of economic flows in the county and the absence of some critical data; (iii) the importance of the Herefordshire landscape to tourism and the role of agriculture as a determinant of the state of that landscape; (iv) weakness of the institutional linkage between tourism and agriculture; (v) the current lack of inclusion of many relevant stakeholders in concerted action. Factors favouring a learning approach included a strong local identity, local food-related developments, and educational initiatives. Barriers to such an approach included questions of power and landholding, government policies, and attitudes and skills within organizations. These findings are considered in relation to the wider debate over approaches to sustainability.

Call for papers: Action Research Journal: special issue on Civil society research for sustainable development

Civil society organisations (CSOs)1 have substantial experience in research activity, even if this has not been formally structured or recognised as conventional research. Their involvement has pursued various aims – highlighting needs and experiences that are otherwise neglected, framing societal problems and research questions differently than in mainstream approaches, gaining legitimacy for contentious knowledge, and gaining a stronger basis to intervene in policy issues. This special issue of Action Research seeks to bring together contributions on civil society organization (CSO) research for sustainable development. Articles should report on projects that have involved CSOs in research in innovative ways and that address the following thematic questions:

The Assessment and Management of Wildlife Areas

There are various systems approaches to tackling decision making, but all systems thinking and analysis is predicated on the concept of holism rather than reductionism. This concept is not unknown in biology. Indeed, it was the study of biological systems that led to the recognition of the significance of this way of viewing complex issues: ‘Biology is an ‘unrestricted’ science...and its phenomena are of a complexity which has severely tested scientific method. Biologists, in fact, have been among the pioneers in establishing ways of thinking in terms of wholes, and it was a biologist, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who suggested generalising this thinking to refer to any kind of whole, not simply to biological systems.’ (Checkland, 1981).

Mapping muck: stakeholders’ views on organic waste

[Editors’ introduction] In this chapter the authors explore stakeholders’ understanding of what to do with organic waste within the United Kingdom. They discuss two projects that were both commissioned and funded under the same Government research programme specifically to support policy making. Although looking at the same broad environmental sustainability issue of how to treat organic waste as a resource to be exploited rather than a waste product to be disposed of, the two projects use mapping and involve participants in different ways. Both projects also highlight how the use of quantitative survey data is informed by, and in turn informs, the use of diagrams within the overall methodology. The authors also look at these projects through the different ways diagrams can be used that were discussed in Chapter Two.

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.