Community Collective Action Research Articles

Utilizing sociocultural identity to cope with poverty-related stress: methodological insights from developing a coping intervention

ABSTRACT Cultural identity affirmation, pride, and belongingness are known to protect youth from negative outcomes in the face of uncontrollable stresses such as discrimination, economic hardship, and community violence. Scholars have argued that racial, cultural, and other social identities serve as important coping resources, encouraging active coping and the use of social support and mitigating the impact of stress for marginalized youth. The Building a Strong Identity and Coping Skills (BaSICS) program was designed to improve mental health by targeting the skills, assets, and resources known to protect against developing emotional and behavioral symptoms and disorders. In the BaSICS intervention, youth explore their cultural and social identities to strengthen their understanding of, and connection to, positively supportive social groups via exploration of family and community cultural heritage. Youth are then encouraged to engage their collaborative coping skills founded in their sociocultural identities, working together on a project of collective community action. This methodological paper will describe the theory and development of the BaSICS identity development and collective coping module.

Investigating the influence of residents' attitudes, perceptions of risk, and subjective norms on their willingness to engage in flood prevention efforts in Freetown, Sierra Leone

This study investigates the intricate relationships between flood disaster risk perception (RP), attitudes(ATT), subjective norms(SN), and participation in flood prevention activities(IPF), emphasizing the mediating roles of self-efficacy(SE) and bonding social capital(BSC). The research in Freetown, Sierra Leone, involved 702 participants, providing a diverse socio-demographic snapshot crucial for understanding community-based flood risk management. Data analysis revealed that demographic factors like age, gender, education, and income significantly influence flood risk perceptions and mitigation behaviors. Additionally, subjective norms were found to substantially impact both self-efficacy and bonding social capital, affecting participation in flood prevention activities. The study also explored the role of community dynamics and social norms in shaping risk perceptions and intentions to engage in flood risk prevention. It was observed that higher self-efficacy and more robust community bonds lead to increased participation in flood mitigation efforts. The findings offer valuable insights into flood prevention behavior's psychological and social drivers and highlight the importance of community-focused strategies in enhancing flood resilience. The study contributes to the broader understanding of flood risk management in urban settings, particularly in developing countries, and underscores the need for policies and practices that foster individual empowerment and collective community action.

Emerging collaboration amid the COVID-19 within the context of traditional-state dualism governance in Bali.

This study highlights the significant role of traditional governance in enhancing community resilience amid the limitations of state capacity in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite conflicting interests with the state, traditional government plays a crucial role in fostering collective community action to address vulnerabilities. The study underscores the importance of greater involvement of Adat actors in disaster management within the context of dualism in governance, spanning from mitigation planning to preparedness, response and recovery. This involvement has the potential to bolster community resilience.

What’s the use of educational research? Six stories reflecting on research use with communities

The question of how education research can be ‘useful’ is an enduring and challenging one. In recent years, this question has been approached by universities through a widespread ‘impact’ agenda. In this article, we explore the tensions between usefulness and impact and present six stories that reflect on research use with communities. These stories engage issues of the risk of usefulness, the time that is needed to work collaboratively for research usefulness, whether theories developed in universities can be useful to communities for understanding the problems they face, who has the power to steer research to serve their purposes, and how community collective action can enhance the usefulness of research. The article concludes with a section that reflects on the importance of continuing to engage with the debates about research use in often highly commercially oriented university environments. This article brings together diverse voices that wrestle with the politics of research use beyond the neat, linear narratives of change that impact agendas tend to portray. These illustrations of the ethical dilemmas encountered through navigating research use with communities contribute to an ongoing conversation about refusing capitalist and colonialist logics of research extraction while working within institutions often driven by such logics.

Performance for Environmental Sustainability in Uganda: A Collective Community Engagement Approach through Theatre for Development

With the rapid economic development and population growth in Uganda, people have neglected the protection of the ecological environment to satisfy the pursuit of material life. This article discusses an ongoing Theatre for Development (TfD) project in which I explore through a Practice as Research (PaR) methodology the significance of community engagement and collective learning through TfD in pursuing environmental sustainability goals in Kigorobya, Hoima District–Bunyoro sub-region, Uganda. The ongoing work investigates how multi-stakeholder partnership and participation of people achieved in TfD can foster sustainable use of environmental resources. The practice-based research project is predicated on the notion that achieving environmental sustainability requires concerted collective community action. Consequently, to achieve ownership of environmental issues, all stakeholders in the community need to be mobilized and engaged in a collective effort to achieve a safe and habitable environment. The project interrogates: to what extent can TfD be posited as a process of achieving a plenitude of praxis and reflection on the deep-seated issues pertaining to environment sustainability?

Creating value from intangible cultural heritage—the role of innovation for sustainable tourism and regional rural development

Based on evidence from two exploratory case studies, the article examines how intangible cultural heritage can promote sustainable rural development by creating value for rural communities. The studied communities in Bavaria, Germany, and Le Marche, Italy, are closely tied to traditional agricultural practices and their historical legacies. In the German case study, alpine pasture farming has sustained its cultural landscape and tourism for generations, while in the Italian case, the rural sharecropping legacy evolved into a culinary heritage project. Bad Hindelang (Germany) stands out as a mature destination with a long history of sustainable tourism, achieved through collaboration between farmers, conservationists, and the local community. The region balances tourism, conservation, and ecological farming through community participation and collective action. In contrast, Le Marche region (Italy) has only recently experienced increasing numbers of international tourists, but seems well-situated to exploit opportunities for cultural and culinary tourism development. The Marche Food and Wine Memories project has preserved the oral memories and the culinary heritage of former sharecroppers, yet economic value for the region has so far been limited. Post-COVID-19, the region may benefit from increased demand for tourism in culturally appealing, authentic and less crowded destinations. The article emphasises that intangible cultural heritage can enrich the quality of life of local residents and enhance visitors’ experiential value. Innovative approaches like storytelling and participatory engagement make these cultural expressions accessible to wider audiences, including tourists, thus benefiting heritage communities in various ways. Both cases highlight the role of innovation, with Bad Hindelang’s eco-model promoting ecological farming and Le Marche’s project preserving sharecroppers’ heritage through corporate heritage marketing. Collaboration among various stakeholders has been a key to success in both cases. The article also illustrates the range of functions fulfilled by intangible cultural heritage, from restoring social dignity to maintaining landscape aesthetics and ecological integrity.

Securing agropastoral system and rural livelihood through the market garden in Niger: unfolding smallholders’ resilience to interwoven challenges

Market gardens in Niger are a crucial tool for securing agropastoral systems and rural livelihoods amid interwoven challenges such as climate change, conflicts and insecurity, demographic pressure and poverty. A study of 60 small garden farmers found that market gardens significantly enhance farmers’ income and household food security. The average annual income from market gardens is 126.51 USD, accounting for 70% of total income. However, challenges like water scarcity, land insecurity, and limited access to credit and markets hinder their full socio-economic role. The farmers try to overcome those obstacles through cooperation, sending remittance from part-time off-farm activities, and mobilisation of resources based on their social capital. Those who could not overcome the challenges left the village for a ‘safer’ location. The study emphasises the need for community collective action, rural-urban networking, and external support to improve market gardens for rural poverty reduction and food security improvement.

Adaptive business model development for community-based peatland restoration in Riau

Livelihood on peatland often involves unsustainable practices such as drainage and extraction, causing peatland degradation. Indonesia’s peatland restoration approach therefore includes interventions for livelihood revitalization and transformation. This paper describes lessons learned in facilitating sustainable livelihood transitions for restoring peatland using the Sustainable Business Model for Communities (SBMC) canvas as a tool. We utilized Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods, where we engaged in intensive focus group discussions, surveys and facilitation of the action or implementation of the business model. SBMC is a useful tool that facilitates the community mapping their ideas and exercising collective action for restoring peatland while generating green business for the community groups in Siak Regency, Riau Province. Our finding suggests that to successfully transform peatland practices and restore ecosystems, a business model should balance economic motives with restoration objectives, enhance community collective action, improve transparency, and increase adaptability. Embracing uncertainty and complexity in community-based peatland restoration can provide an opportunity for learning and improving the community’s business model. Viewing business model development as an iterative process enables the community group to revisit and refine their model in response to landscape adaptation.

New Capital City of Indonesia, an Opportunity or Threat for Ecotourism Resilience in East Borneo

The purpose of this paper is to explore the positive and negative impacts of relocating the new national capital (IKN) to East Kalimantan on ecotourism resilience, in the context of scientific literature and international news. This research integrated the systematic literature review (SLR) and qualitative textual analysis (QTA) methods to validate each other’s results. The QTA results could support or challenge the SLR results to answer research questions. The results showed that the relocation of IKN was a great opportunity for ecotourism resilience, positive transmigration, government and community collective action, and stronger stakeholder collaboration. In contrast, IKN relocation could also be a real threat to ecotourism resilience due to natural disasters, government capitalism, negative transmigration, deforestation, environmental degradation, and marginalization of local communities.

9.H. Workshop: Applying the Supersetting-approach to tackle health inequities in disadvantaged settings

Abstract Inequity in health remains a major urgent global public health challenge, not least concerning noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) including type 2 diabetes (T2D). Peoples’ abilities to live long healthy lives is linked to their social and economic situation and living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods is associated with increased health risk across the life course and increased risk of T2D in adulthood. The risk of ill health is thus deeply rooted in the complex social contexts of people's everyday lives. Thus, addressing the social determinants of health by incorporating a variety of strategies and interventions in the settings where people live is imperative to tackle health inequities. Evidence suggests that multilevel-multicomponent interventions can have a positive impact on a range of health and behavioural outcomes. Moreover, studies show that bottom-up approaches in community interventions constitute important drivers of collaborative action and sustainable solutions to inequity in health at a community level. This workshop presents the Supersetting approach - an intervention strategy for comprehensive community interventions - as one solution to tackle growing health inequities in disadvantaged urban settings focusing on T2D. The approach strives to attain synergistic effects through coordinated engagement of multiple stakeholders in multiple settings to mobilize local resources and strengthen social networks for collective community action. The Supersetting approach has recently gained international recognition as a “a whole-of-society endeavor” approach to health promotion by welcoming complexity at all levels of the intervention. The workshop uses Tingbjerg Changing Diabetes (TCD) a long-term community-based initiative, as a case to unfold the complexity and width of the Supersetting approach (www.tingbjergchangingdiabetes.dk). Beginning with an introduction and conceptualization of the Supersetting approach and characterization of the urban area of Tingbjerg focusing on T2D, we hereafter present three integrated TCD initiatives. These illustrate how the Supersetting approach can be applied in practice as well as how to explore and measure its different impacts through different methodological approaches. The workshop aims to present and discuss the potentials and challenges of using a Supersetting approach to tackle inequalities in health in disadvantaged urban settings. Key messages • The rising challenge of inequity in health calls for complex systems approaches. • The Supersetting approach is presented as a sustainable complex systems approach to tackle growing health inequities in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

RISING Strong: Sustainability through Art, Science, and Collective Community Action

The objective of this research is to offer a qualitative analysis of adult STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics) learning in a community setting, with a focus on sustainability and climate action. To date, much research on STEAM learning has been directed towards youth and children in formal educational settings. Our qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with community participants, artists, and scientists over the course of a six-month initiative in Ireland allowed us to develop a rich picture of a multi-faceted STEAM project that held space for both a social change agenda and a learning agenda. In our findings, we identified several contributing factors to transformative learning and changed feelings about climate change, including pride of place, the development of strong interpersonal relationships, and an emerging sense of collective agency through a shared emotional and affective journey. To design for meaningful, community-level climate action, we argue that learning may be supported in, with and through STEAM. Our study also showcases the value of the arts and aesthetic experiences to embrace dissensus when tackling a complex issue like climate change through STEAM education.

Examining forest transition and collective action in Nepal’s community forestry

Nepal is going through a major socio-economic transition in rural areas and hence in forest management practices, leading to changes in and evolution of new forest-people relationships. Community forests are experiencing an ecological transition resulting a new pattern of growth, regeneration and diversity in forest composition. The ecological transition of forest corresponds to the shifting local collective actions in community forestry which are emerging from the new socio-economic dynamics in rural areas such as income-diversification, declining subsistence utilization of forest resources and outmigration of the rural population. However, these changes are highly differentiated and variable. The hilly areas are experiencing remarkable forest cover changes than in the lowlands of Terai. In this paper, we examine the evolving intersection between new forest transition and community collective action in Nepal. We draw our analysis on the comparative case study of four villages from three different ecological regions. Our findings show that the forest transition is not static, but a dynamic process shaped by diverse local and external factors. Further, declining utilization of forests for subsistence uses has led to a new dynamic in community collective action which has played a central role in driving forest transition. Community participation in forest management is also declining. Hence, we call for reconceptualizing local collective action in this changed context which can help revise forest policies and reimagine forest institutions that can better respond to the socio-economic changes of the mountain landscape and revitalize local collective actions.

San Francisco's Citywide COVID-19 Response: Strategies to Reduce COVID-19 Severity and Health Disparities, March 2020 Through May 2022.

San Francisco implemented one of the most intensive, comprehensive, multipronged COVID-19 pandemic responses in the United States using 4 core strategies: (1) aggressive mitigation measures to protect populations at risk for severe disease, (2) prioritization of resources in neighborhoods highly affected by COVID-19, (3) timely and adaptive data-driven policy making, and (4) leveraging of partnerships and public trust. We collected data to describe programmatic and population-level outcomes. The excess all-cause mortality rate in 2020 in San Francisco was half that seen in 2019 in California as a whole (8% vs 16%). In almost all age and race and ethnicity groups, excess mortality from COVID-19 was lower in San Francisco than in California overall, with markedly diminished excess mortality among people aged >65 years. The COVID-19 response in San Francisco highlights crucial lessons, particularly the importance of community responsiveness, joint planning, and collective action, to inform future pandemic response and advance health equity.

Students as Place-Makers: A Case Study on Action Civics and Place

In this study, we aimed to understand the role of place in how young people come to understand civic life. We implemented and studied an action civics curriculum at two sites to explore the connections between place and youth civic identity. We found that (1) place informs students’ conceptualizations of community responsibility and collective action, (2) place can help students see community issues in expansive and critical ways, and (3) attention to place during instruction can encourage young people to identify as civic agents. We suggest that a pedagogical emphasis between place and action civics helps students imagine themselves as builders of their socio-material reality and contributes to their civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

Rebuilding rural community cooperative institutions and their role in herder adaptation to climate change

ABSTRACT Many studies have emphasized the importance of community-based natural resource management institutions in adapting to climate change and responding to the global shift towards individualized land tenure regimes. However, few have reported on the innovative institutions developed by some rural communities to rebuild community cooperation and rural adaptive capacity. This paper draws on four comparative cases from the Tibetan Plateau to assess how locally developed community cooperative institutions mediate herders’ access to markets and resources to foster adaptive capacity and adaptation in response to snow-related catastrophes. Results demonstrate that community cooperative institutions are more effective in improving adaptive capacity than the market-based adaptation strategies that are the predetermined outcome of individualized tenure regimes. When such cooperative institutions exist, community members are able to apply both household and community collective adaptation strategies, resulting in better livelihood outcomes. Community cooperative institutions effectively address individual needs and priorities by clarifying entitlements and market-based networks. They rebuild community collective action and cooperative business entities that improve herders’ ability to access resources and markets more equally by distributing benefits to all community members. This study concludes that following the establishment of individualized land tenure regimes, rebuilding community cooperation necessitates hybridization of property rights arrangements, reformed institutions, and social networks operating across levels of governance to facilitate interdependent interactions between collective and individual adaptation strategies. Such community cooperation offers new opportunities for improving adaptive capacity in pastoral regions and elsewhere.

Enfoque de paisaje para apoyar el manejo forestal sostenible en la región Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, México

Forest landscape structure comprises a mosaic of natural and human-modified units, which when well depicted, may help to plan and implement forest management policies, which commonly assume territorial homogeneity. Usually, forest policies lack the use of spatial tools that can help scale up conservation program in heterogeneous forested landscapes. This paper applied a conceptual-methodological framework as baseline to guide regional strategies and scale-up community collective action based on local forestry ejidos and communities. The study case was conducted in the Mixteca Alta, a forestry region in Oaxaca, Mexico, where common property prevails. Zoning was made based on biophysical, social, and forest management criteria. A total of 97 communities were surveyed and the region was disaggregated into five zones based on precipitation, watersheds, community forest management experience and level of regional collective action. Each zone was recognized as having different forestry potentials and intervention needs, ranging from restoration to timber and non-timber product management. This zoning proved the potential to guide forest projects and promote joint regional forest development. The potential use of landscape zoning was discussed in the light of the current need for scale-up forest policies.

The Role of Social Capital in Fostering Collective Action for Small-Scale Fishery Co-Management in the Baixo Juruá Extractive Reserve, Central-West Brazilian Amazon

Social capital is pointed out as a key factor for community social organization and the collective management of natural resources. In this study, I investigated the role of community social capital in facilitating collective action for arapaima (Arapaima sp.) management and the underlying motivations for engagement on collective action, in the six arapaima management systems of the Baixo Juruá Extractive Reserve (Amazonas). Through semi-structured interviews with 62% of the 95 households of communities that participate on management, I compared household participation in arapaima management in relation to demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, social and political engagement, and social capital. In four out of the six management systems, 70% to 86% of households participated on management, compared to only 31% and 33% in the other systems. Participation in collective action for arapaima management varied in a similar fashion with social capital in the community. Both bonding and bridging social capital come into play in fostering collective action. Although human relations are important components in community collective action, people also reveal utilitarian motivations for engagement. Thus, when incentives are provided, they might find it relevant to participate on resource management. This study highlights the role of social capital in natural resource management and may serve both communities and decision makers.

Societal dynamics of sustainability certification in Ghanaian cocoa producing communities: Assessing social cohesion effects and their implications for collective action

ABSTRACT In the global cocoa-chocolate chain, sustainability certification became the most widely applied industry tool to respond to sustainability challenges, such as extreme poverty among cocoa producers, and related issues of child labor and deforestation. This contribution analyzes how sustainability certification shapes broader social dynamics in targeted communities by applying the concept of social cohesion. This framework allows for the discussion on the appropriateness of sustainability certification to foster the needed societal conditions for community empowerment and collective action, both of which often regarded as key for a broader sustainability transition. Insights from key informant interviews in two Ghanaian cocoa communities targeted by a Rainforest Alliance cocoa sustainability project indicate that there is an enhanced interaction between scheme participants leading to new ingroup-outgroup patterns among community members. Further, while some informal institutions and one particular societal group are negatively affected by the sustainability intervention, no broader effect on communities’ overall social cohesion was measured. Finally, despite contributing to the greening of cocoa production, certification implements measures that risk to hamper the spread of collective action and may dilute the “societal glue” in targeted communities.

Indigenous and Local Knowledge’s Role in Social Movement’s Struggles Against Threats to Community-Based Natural Resource Management Systems: Insights from a Qualitative Meta-analysis

Despite the international consensus about the benefits of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) for sustainable resource governance, Indigenous peoples and local communities continue to face threats to their self-governance stemming from shortsighted government regulations, marginalization, and other global political economy forces. To contribute to scholarship on the impact of social movements on CBNRM organization and robustness, in this article we focus on the role that Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) plays in the social movement’s struggles against threats to their CBNRM system. Specifically, we present the results from a qualitative meta-analysis of 20 cases extracted from a previous literature review (Villamayor-Tomas & García-López 2018). Through our analyses we explore the extent to which different ILK dimensions are a) part of the baseline CBNRM system; b) impacted by the threats to the CBNRM system; c) mobilized by social movements in their struggle to defend the CBNRM system; and d) affected by the outcomes of the social movement’s struggle. Our results show that ILK is affected by threats to CBNRM both directly (e.g., via the erosion of ILK-based institutions that govern the CBNRM system) and indirectly (e.g., via the erosion of the natural environments in which ILK develops). We also highlight that social movements mobilize different ILK dimensions depending on the socio-political context, the locally perceived nature of threats, and the perceived importance of certain ILK dimensions for community cohesion and collective action strengthening. Finally, we reflect on how, although conceptualizing ILK dimensions and CBNRM system separately and formalizing their linkages might offer new research opportunities, ILK systems are holistic knowledge commons that are hard to disentangle from the physical commons in the context of CBNRM systems.

Functionality of Rural Community Water Supply Systems and Collective Action: a Case of Guras Rural Municipality, Karnali Province

Ensuring the long-term functionality of community-managed rural water supply systems has been a persistent development challenge. It is well established that the technicalities of keeping the systems going are impacted by complex political, social, financial, and institutional challenges. While the shift to federal, three-tiered governance allocates concurrent responsibility for drinking water management to the local government with federal and provincial governments, water and sanitation user groups continue to shoulder the management of local supply systems voluntarily. All three levels have jurisdiction over water-related services resulting in confusion of roles. This study focuses on the local level, where community management of water and sanitation decentralisation is the key approach in this complex tangle of diverse institutions with different actors managing and governing water. User Groups and their Committees in the Guras Rural Municipality of Dailekh district, Karnali province, in West Nepal, provided the case study, which was analysed using Ostrom's well-recognised Eight Principles for Sustainable Governance of Common-Pool Resources. The community-based model, established formally through the Water Resource Act 1992 (2049 BS), is critically analysed in light of the changing socio- economic context through the intervening years. The results highlight the need for stronger collaboration between the rural municipality and users to achieve good water supplies and the risks of losing access and voice in water management for women and marginalised people when inactive user groups are replaced by private or group interests taking control of the water access.