Context in Which We Write the Book
Social ecological systems (SES) and sustainability research offer exciting approaches to engage with the complex issues of our time, ranging from a single community protecting a beloved local area from development, to management of a state conservation area, to the impacts of the Anthropocene that ricochet across global and local scales. Recognition of interdependent relationships between humans and the environment has been essential to the advances made in SES research, as has the acknowledgement that SES are non-linear and dynamic. A key challenge is finding integrated approaches to SES that combine the knowledge and practices from the many disciplines that contribute to this space.
Different scholarships have made advances in helping explicate the range of ways we might think about and engage with the challenge of integrating knowledge. However, the complexity remains, and this may reflect difficulties in achieving interdisciplinarity. Some scholars, including ourselves, argue that this integration of what and how we know SES is incomplete (Cumming 2014; Herrero-JƔuregui et al. 2018). Disciplinary and philosophical differences, even if unconscious, are often irreconcilable (Phoenix et al. 2013). Tackling integration by focusing on more abstract philosophical and disciplinary differences can present an obstacle for researchers, practitioners, and students interested in SES. Instead, we suggest that starting with practice, starting with what researchers, practitioners, and people do in their everyday lives or disciplines, and using narratives as accessible stories, can act as a doorway to reflect on what is known and prioritised, along with engaging with more abstract differences. This book supports taking action by outlining a practice-focused way to navigate the messiness of social ecological challenges, and serves as a vehicle for empowerment, vision, and action at a time when there is an increasing number of complex issues that threaten human survival and demand approaches that can facilitate sustainability.
Why This Book
Interdisciplinary collaboration, or synthesis, is at the core of SES research and management, sustainability science, and many other areas. However, integration is a messy business, especially in SES because the synthesis process needs to occur at multiple scales: how learnings integrate with policy, how the frameworks, tools, and practices of social and ecological disciplines can be brought together, as well as how our individual practices as researchers and practitioners need to respond to changing contexts and the integration of new learnings. There is a wide array of SES frameworks that are effective within a particular discipline, but these often have limitations in their ability to link and integrate SES together (Binder et al. 2013; Cumming 2014), and there are differences of opinion about how to integrate social ecological knowledge. Herrero-JƔuregui et al. (2018) called for a well-documented framework to build bridges between the disciplines connected to social and ecological ways of knowing. Recent reviews of SES research suggest that synthesis remains a challenge, of bringing together different knowledges (Cumming 2014), bringing together different practices (Herrero-JƔuregui et al. 2018; Perz 2019), as well as exploring the relationship between epistemology (how we know), ontology (how we view reality) and axiology (our values) (Binder et al. 2013; Cumming 2014; Collard et al. 2018).
This book seeks to actively, and with humility, engage with the challenge of integration within the social ecological systems research and management space. We focus our energies here because we are concerned by complex, social ecological challenges. Through understanding and responding to SES, we wish to contribute to efforts to facilitate sustainability. In research on how to express and to integrate multiple human and non-human aspects in SES, the starting point is often grappling with different knowledges (Phoenix et al. 2013), which are inherently irreconcilable and can make processes initially seem futile. As we indicated above, we offer a reorientation of interdisciplinary integration by turning to practice. However, there is no pre-existing map for navigating this kind of interdisciplinary practice in SES thinking that is accessible to practitioners and disciplinarians alike. We needed a map ourselves, so we developed this book.
āAlter your perspective by a few degrees, and the view is differentā Bruce Pascoe (2014, p. 36) states in Dark Emu, on seeing Indigenous history and culture in Australia disentangled from colonial racism. We turn to practice in this book as a starting point for developing awareness of and then shifting our view, our conscious engagement in interdisciplinarity, and our participation in the struggle for social and environmental justice. In response, we offer the practice-oriented process of āadaptive doingā in which people are asked to do differently, see differently, and open space for unexpected outcomes to emerge.
The aims of this book are:
- to outline and demonstrate āadaptive doingā, a practice-oriented process for integrating research in SES, that is transparent, inclusive, and engaged;
- to demonstrate three reframing tools from the social sciencesāthe 4 Is, assemblage, and the eternally unfolding presentāthat assist SES researchers and practitioners to participate in āadaptive doingā; and
- to overcome disciplinary silos by creating a platform that we call the āagoraā, which creates a space where SES researchers and practitioners can participate in āadaptive doingā to learn and improve SES practices and outcomes.
In response to these aims, we offer a practice-focused approach that draws on a breadth of scholarship across SES thinking, interdisciplinarity, social learning, and critical reflection. By practice, we mean any kind of ongoing, often everyday activity that involves a combination of knowledge and context as constituent parts (Cook and Wagenaar 2012). Given our focus on SES research, we are particularly interested in practices that are contributing to, elucidating, or mitigating complex issues related to sustainability.
Approach Taken in the Book
We take an interdisciplinary approach in this book. We see interdisciplinarity as a process for co-creating shared understanding of a phenomenon or system that shapes and is shaped by those involved. We, the authors, come from different disciplinary backgrounds, although we all started our disciplinary training within the natural sciences. We seek to be transparent, owning the biases that we bring to writing and engaging in social ecological research. We come from and/or work across different ontological positions, including: post-positivism, perceiving that there is an imperfectly knowable single real world; constructivism, wherein there are multiple understandings of the world, which are known through each personās experience and are built over time; and critical theory, which sees multiple understandings of the world, and acts in the world to illuminate and create change. We seek to bring a just and ethical approach in the processes and examples we offer in this book.
Who Is the Book for?
We write this book for other researchers and practitioners who work or are interested in a systems-thinking approach for engaging with SES issues. We see systems as a network of relationships that form an integrated whole, that are nested within other systems, and contain subsystems (e.g., Berkes et al. 2003). We recognise that not all researchers in areas of sustainability or environmental issues engage with systems thinking, but we welcome such researchers to explore this approach along with critical reflection. We write this book for people who are interested in alternative ways of thinking about sustainability and opening new questions and directions for practice.
Structure of the Book and the Function of Each Chapter
In this first chapter, we outline the impetus for the book and how and to whom we think it can be useful. In the second chapter, we introduce a wetland case study that at first appears unremarkable but is itself full of drama. Our case is situated in south-west Victoria, Australia and we return to it in the following chapters. In Chapter 3, we utilise our case to highlight examples of the achievements and challenges currently faced in SES research and management. Chapter 4 introduces three key elements: āadaptive doingā, which is a practice-oriented process; a platform in which to participate in adaptive doing, the āagoraā; and three reframing toolsāthe 4 Is, assemblage, and the eternally unfolding present, that offer different perspectives. The āadaptive doingā process works to develop awareness of changed positions and improve integration, which leads to changes in understanding and practices among local communities, by researchers and with practitioners, and offers new insights that can assist us to facilitate sustainability. The āagoraā provides a space and time in which a practice-oriented approach can occur, it assists in building mutual respect among participants, and to overcome path dependencies in an SES. The three reframing tools that come from the social sciences, assist integration by offering different perspectives. Finally, in Chapter 5 we share the outcomes of applying adaptive doing and the three reframing tools to the case. We conclude with reflections on the insights we gained as researchers and practitioners from being in the āagoraā and engaging with the adaptive doing process.
References
- Berkes, F., J. Colding, and C. Folke (eds.). 2003. Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Binder, C.R., J. Hinkel, P.W.G. Bots, and C. Pahl-Wostl. 2013. Comparison of Frameworks for Analyzing Social-Ecological Systems. Ecology and Society 18 (4): 26.Crossref
- Collard, R.-C., L.M. Harris, N. Heynen, and L. Mehta. 2018. The Antinomies of Nature and Space. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1 (1ā2): 3ā24.
- Cook, S.D.M., and H. Wagenaar. 2012. Navigating the Eternally Unfolding Present: Toward an Epistemology of Practic...