Action%20Research%20to%20Promote%20the%20Social%20Stewardship%20of%20Ecosystem%20Services

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Action Research to Promote the Social Stewardship
of Ecosystem Services

• Introduction
• Peter Reason

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The Crisis of Sustainability

• Climate change is serious, real and happening now
• Degradation of ecosystems everywhere
• Sixth great extinction of species
• Population at 6 bn moving toward 8/9 bn
• Obscene gap between rich and poor
• Limits to growth Peak Oil approaching Peak
  water on the way?

3
Lester Brown

• We have created an economy that cannot take us
  where we want to go the economic policies that
  have yielded extraordinary growth in the world
  economy are the same ones that are destroying its
  support systems

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Action Research

• Worthwhile purposes
• Practical issues
• Participation and Democracy
• Many ways of knowing
• Emergence

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Practical Issues

• Action research is not a methodology, it is an
  orientation toward inquiry and toward managing
  human affairs
• Addresses significant and worthwhile issues
• Aims to produce knowledge and understanding that
  is useful to individuals, organizations and
  society
• Knowledge at point of action rather than at point
  of reflection
• We are challenged to respond to the crisis of
  sustainability

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Richard Rorty

• We cannot regard truth as a goal of inquiry. The
  purpose of inquiry is to achieve agreement among
  human beings about what to do, to bring about
  consensus on the ends to be achieved and the
  means used to achieve those ends. Inquiry that
  does not achieve coordination is not inquiry, but
  simply wordplay.

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Participation and Democracy

• If we want to research issues of practice we must
  engage with people not impose on people
• The actors are the ones who have the insider
  knowledge
• The actors are the ones who can do things
• Engaging in research is educational and
  liberating
• People have a right to be involved in knowledge
  creation
• Pedagogy of the oppressed and pedagogy of the
  privileged

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Many ways of knowing

• Because action research engages people in
  explorations of practice it can involve an
  extended epistemology
• Experiential knowing
• Presentational knowing
• Propositional knowing
• Practical knowing
• Cycles of action and reflection

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Emergence

• Action researchers engage their collaborators in
  action and reflection in real life issues in real
  time
• This is necessarily messy, evolutionary, emergent
• Understanding grows
• Skills of inquiry grow
• People feel empowered
• Community of inquiry grows
• As the unexpected happens
• As new inquiry questions spin off

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Creating an attitude of inquiry

• An attitude of open curiosity
• A willingness to suspend taken-for-granted
  assumptions
• An ability to fully respect the perspectives of
  others
• Courage to try new behaviours in practice
• A sense that little is ever fixed in life

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Three paths for inquiry

• First-person reflective practice am I acting
  with inquiry and inviting others to do so?
• Second-person engaging relevant others in
  face-to-face inquiry
• Transforming whole systems (organizations,
  communities, societies) towards greater inquiry,
  learning organizations

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Three aspects of sustainable practice

• Awareness
• What the issues are
• Their urgency
• Their systemic nature
• The limits of human agency
• Agency
• An experienced capacity to act role and skills
• Association
• We cannot address these issues alone

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Six narratives of action research

• Gill Coleman Adoption of low carbon technology
• Hilary Bradbury Sustainable Enterprise Executive
  Roundtable
• Barbara Bodorkós György Pataki Local
  communities empowered to plan?
• Mark Gater Whats money got to do with it?
• Judi Marshall Action Research as adult education
• David Ballard Organizational break through to
  high level ecological management