Governing a Collective Bad: Social Learning in the Management of Crop Diseases

Elias Damtew,Barbara Van Mierlo,Berga Lemaga,Paul Struik,Rico Lie,Cees Leeuwis,Christine Smart

doi:10.1007/s11213-019-09518-4

Abstract

There has been strong research interest in designing and testing learning approaches for enhancing and sustaining the capacity of communities to manage collective action problems. Broadening the perspective from well-known social learning approaches in natural resource management, this study explores how social learning as a communicative process influences collective action in contagious crop disease management. A series of facilitated discussion and reflection sessions about late blight management created the social learning space for potato farmers in Ethiopia. Communicative utterances of participants in the sessions served as the units of analysis. The study demonstrates how and to what extent social learning, in the form of aligned new knowledge, relations and actions occurred and formed the basis for collective action in the management of late blight.

Highlights

Potato late blight disease represents a serious problem for farmers in almost all major potatogrowing areas (Tsedaley 2014; Mekonen et al 2011; Kassa and Beyene 2001)
Our research provided evidence that social learning can lead to the emergence of a rudimentary form of institutionalized coercion which can help to reduce overcome non-compliance in the management of contagious crop diseases, such as late blight
We conclude that social learning and associated collective actions in the management of late blight are outcomes of an ongoing communication process with a range of interlinked technical, relational and action related issues

Summary

Introduction

Potato late blight disease represents a serious problem for farmers in almost all major potatogrowing areas (Tsedaley 2014; Mekonen et al 2011; Kassa and Beyene 2001). The search for solutions and management practices should take into consideration, on one hand, technical effectiveness and, on the other hand, institutional mechanisms that stimulate and facilitate collective management at the appropriate scale (Graham et al 2019; Zamani et al 2018; Marshall 2016). To this end, there is a well-established research effort in designing and testing approaches aimed at enhancing collective capacity in the management of agricultural pests and diseases, generally engaging farming communities in a variety of communal management practices (Hegde et al 2017; Christmann et al 2015; Biedenweg and Monroe 2013a)

Objectives

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion