Experimentation and Enactive Research

Abstract

The chapter outlines what happened in the Aotearoa New Zealand context when the country's Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge actively included a diversity of Maori and social scientists from the universities and Crown Research Institutes as researchers, project leaders, and members of the Challenge's leadership team. The resulting diverse community had unprecedented impacts on Blue Economy thinking and initiatives leading to an institutionalised inversion of the economy-environment relation to prioritising environment as a basis for future looking Blue Economy investment. The chapter's longitudinal overview uses a mixed methodology, part auto-ethnography and part strategic interviewing, to reveal experimental steps in the emergence of a knowledge infrastructure supporting enactive social research in marine spaces. The evidence presented illustrates how other worlds and outcomes are possible. The chapter's discussion of transformative steps contributes directly to understanding the pre-conditions and necessary and sufficient conditions that go into sustainable and just environment-economy transitions.