Participatory Elements Research Articles

Putting transdisciplinary research into practice: A participatory approach to understanding change in coastal social-ecological systems

As the health of many coastal ecosystems declines, there is an increasingly urgent need for research that transcends academic disciplines and can respond to complex environmental problems. While the benefits of transdisciplinary research are widely recognised, there are institutional and practical constraints on researchers wishing to put these approaches into practice. In this paper we seek to understand how incorporating participatory elements into research design and data collection can enhance the benefits of a transdisciplinary approach and improve outcomes for scientists and users of research. To do so, we describe and reflect on a transdisciplinary research project conducted in a large industrial port in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia. Drawing on experiential observation and theoretical contributions from across the literatures on transdisciplinary and participatory research, we also develop an integrated research framework that can be applied across contexts. The research demonstrates that incorporating participatory techniques during the research scoping phase can help researchers to develop a transdisciplinary research programme that can both strengthen research outcomes and ensure their relevance to coastal communities and decision makers.

Changes in Social Capital and Cigarette Smoking Behavior Over Time: A Population-Based Panel Study of Temporal Relationships.

Identifying factors that influence individuals' smoking behavior remains a huge public health concern. This study aimed to investigate changes in individuals' cigarette smoking while considering well-known smoking determinants, including social capital, its presence being postulated to reduce smoking. From British Household Panel Survey data, two baseline smoking cohorts were created ("smoking" and "not smoking"). The same individuals from this nationally representative sample (NT = 8114, aged 16-91 years) were interviewed on four occasions between years 2000 and 2007 to investigate changes in cigarette smoking behavior. Logistic regression models with random effects compensated for within-individual behavior over time. Temporal pathways were investigated by lagging independent variables (t - 1) in relation to our cigarette-use outcome at time (t). Active social participation at (t - 1) was positively associated with smoking cessation at (t) (odds ratio [OR] = 1.39; 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.07-1.82]). Separating from one's spouse at (t - 1) increased risk for smoking relapse/initiation at (t) (OR = 6.63; 95% CI [1.70-28.89]). Conversely, being married protected against smoking cigarettes (OR = 1.87; 95% CI [1.15-3.04]). These associations held in our robustness checks. Initial marital breakdown predicted a high risk of smoking relapse/initiation. The timing of this life event provides a critical window where adverse smoking behavior might occur. Conversely, the positive effects of active social participation on cigarette cessation remained consistent, its absence further predicting smoking relapse/initiation. Robustness of results confirms the important role that active participation has on cigarette smoking behavior. Group smoking cessation interventions could harness participatory elements to better achieve their goals. By investigating temporal relationships between well-known smoking determinants and cigarette smoking outcomes, we identified that being "separated" (not "divorced") at time (t) predicted a higher risk of smoking relapse/initiation at (t). Tailored health messages could be employed to highlight the increased risk of cigarette smoking relapse/initiation during this stressful life event. Conversely, active social participation (a common social capital proxy) consistently predicted smoking cessation over time. Future group smoking cessation interventions could be designed explicitly to harness participatory elements to better achieve their goals.

Early Years Educators at Play: A Research-based Early Childhood Professional Development Program

Every culture has developed some version of performance art. Children especially appreciate performance; their innate openness, forgiveness, and self-love make them delightful performers and audience members. Every time they engage with performance art, children are learning about storytelling, history, sociability, artistry, and physicality. Through performance, children learn skills related to organization, collaboration, emotional competence, compassion, and literacy. Children learn best when their lessons include rich, multi-faceted and participatory elements; drama and theater can help augment learning by involving physical movement and child participation to aid in comprehension and memory. In this article, the authors discuss a professional development program designed to support teachers in employing drama strategies for literacy instruction with 3- to 5-year-old children.

Opportunities and challenges for mainstreaming the ecosystem services concept in the multi-level policy-making within the EU

Mainstreaming the ecosystem services (ES) concept in EU policy-making, i.e., introducing it in a variety of policy fields, comes along with great expectations from practitioners, policy-makers, and scientists to improve environmental policy and halt the loss of biodiversity. While most environmental policies incorporate ES-related governance tools, only very few policies refer to ES explicitly, and for most non-environmental policies mainstreaming has, if at all, just begun. This article addresses three major challenges for mainstreaming the ES concept into EU policies: the need for (1) vertical and (2) horizontal policy integration, and (3) the question of stakeholder involvement in policy-making. It further examines the different meanings of ‘mainstreaming’ and discusses how the ES concept can be used as boundary concept in participatory processes to overcome the challenges by mediating between the different understandings of the forms and objectives of mainstreaming. The paper draws empirically on a review of legal, policy, and scientific documents and on a focus group with six policy-makers from several EU Directorate Generals. The article finds that mainstreaming the ES concept into EU policy-making is no ‘silver bullet’ and that expectations management – in particular with respect to the use of economic valuation methods – is necessary to avoid frustration of involved stakeholders. Further, while participatory approaches may be helpful for local policy integration and balancing trade-offs across policy fields, they may fail in face of administrative challenges of vertical policy integration or of imbalanced power relations and opposing agendas on the horizontal policy integration. To become trustworthy and effective organisational structures, new participatory elements need to be effectively linked with the relevant existing administrations and (other) democratically legitimised decision-making structures. Finally, a well-facilitated and careful process of reflection of the boundary work involved may improve the potential of mainstreaming the ES concept.

User participatory medical service design elements for endocrine disease management

User participatory medical service design elements for endocrine disease management

Office of Technology Assessment: History, implementation, and participatory critique

The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which was created by the Technology Assignment Act of 1972, was—and still remains even after its abolishment in 1995—a unique congressional agency. OTA provided members of Congress with their own means of understanding and evaluating complex science and technology matters—of which there are no shortages. It spurred an entire literature of academic research both about OTA and the idea of technology assessment more generally. Understanding the legislative history and implementation of the Technology Assessment Act is crucial not just for scholarship, though. OTA was a blueprint for institutionalizing politically accountable technology assessment. Even as technologies advance at rapid rates, OTA still offers valuable lessons that scholars and policy-makers alike ought to glean. This paper places OTA in a contemporary context of (institutionalized) technology assessment. It contributes to a better understanding of OTA's origins by tracing its lineage to a set of federal reports beginning in 1929. It then analyzes OTA's response to pragmatic implementation questions of how to strike a balance between speed, depth, scope, and temporal focus. Lastly, it uses a public values framework to critique OTA's failure to adequately incorporate participatory elements into its processes.

It’s My Party (And I’ll Do What I Want To)?: Internal Party Democracy and Section 19 of The South African Constitution

South Africa’s democracy has both representative and participatory elements. The participatory aspect of democracy enhances the civic dignity of citizens by empowering them to take part in decisions that affect their lives. However, the overbearing role that political parties play in the South African democracy runs the risk of limiting the ability of citizens to participate effectively in decisions that impact on their lives. This is because the leaders of political parties (especially of governing parties) may wield enormous power and influence inside their respective parties and in the legislature and executive. Where the ordinary members of parties have little or no direct say about the formulation of the policies of the party they belong to or the election of its leaders or those who will stand for election as public representatives at national and provincial level, the ability of such members to participate in democratic processes and decisions are limited. To facilitate the participation of party members in the activities of a political party to ensure the enhancement of their civic dignity s 19(1)(b) of the Constitution guarantees the right of every citizen freely to make political choices, including the right to participate in the activities of, or recruit members for, a political party. In Ramakatsa v Magashule the majority of the Constitutional Court affirmed the importance of the right of party members to participate freely in the activities of the political party they belong to and also found that the constitutions of political parties have to ensure this happens. Provisions of a political party’s constitution can be declared invalid if it fails to comply with the provisions of the Bill of Rights (including s 19(1) (b)). This article contends that Ramakatsa can be interpreted to place a positive duty on the legislature to pass a ‘party law’ that sets minimum requirements to protect the democratic participation of party members in the activities of the party – including about the formulation of party policies, the election of party office bearers and the selection of the party’s candidates for election as public representatives.

Embeddedness of climate change adaptation: established procedures and contending discourses for flood protection in Espoo, Finland

Calls for more stakeholder participation and cooperation, the acknowledgement of uncertainties as well as for flexible and robust solutions have become frequent in the literature on climate change adaptation. Recent studies show that these calls are taken up only reluctantly in local adaptation compared to sectoral and technical solutions. The aim of this study is to examine to which extent adaptation as an embedded process within the local context allows for stakeholder participation, cooperation and the robustness and flexibility of adaptation measures. It applies an analytical approach, combining an action framework of adaptation and document-based discourse analysis, to assess both the procedural and the substantive viewpoint of an adaptation case in Finland. This twofold approach provides insight into how the adaptation process and content influence and condition each other. The analysis highlights how new approaches to adaptation have to compete with prevailing discourses and institutionalised practices, as public authorities take the dominant role in adaptation, striving for certain and safe solutions. This process has few participatory elements and leaves little leeway to address uncertainty.

Epidemiology Caught in the Causal Web of Bovine Tuberculosis

Bovine tuberculosis in domestic cattle in the presence of significant infection levels in wild animal species represents a major challenge for disease control. The use of wild animal population density reduction as part of risk management policies is highly controversial from the perspectives of scientific effectiveness and societal acceptability. The experience in Great Britain in dealing with this problem over the last 20 years demonstrates the need to engage in an integrated approach towards risk governance to more effectively deal with such a complex and contentious multifactorial animal disease problem. As part of this process, the traditional emphasis on bioscientific, in particular epidemiological, research needs to be complemented by relevant social science approaches. In addition, the risk assessment as well as the risk management should have effective participatory elements.

From Patient to Participant: Enhancing the Validity and Ethics of Cancer Research through Participatory Research

Participatory health research involves a wide spectrum of participation from the population of study. We describe the participatory research processes of a large mixed method study on the psychosocial impact of dragon boating in individuals with breast cancer. In particular, we discuss the involvement of a Community Advisory Group (consisting of five breast cancer patients/survivors) in the development of the research study, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of the study results. We also outline the elements of a research workshop, in which 13 breast cancer patients/survivors were involved in the development of a provincial survey for the study. The purpose of this article is to share our experience of engaging cancer patients/survivors in a participatory research study. We discuss the value-based elements of participatory research (power sharing, voice and respect, reciprocity, and mutual benefit), and provide a case-based example of how these participatory elements were employed to potentially increase the validity of the survey instrument, to enhance the ethics of working with a cancer population, and ultimately contributed to a high survey response rate.

Munsch at Play Act Two: Eight More Stage Adaptations by I. Watts & R. Munsch

Watts, Irene N., and Robert Munsch. Munsch at Play Act Two: Eight More Stage Adaptations. Illus. Michael Marchenko. Toronto: Annick, 2011. Print. Which child should inhabit the role of the protagonist Andrew (“No, no, no, no, no”) in “I Have to Go”? What could be used to make the “sound” in “Jonathan Cleaned Up — Then He Heard a Sound”? How could you dress the titular character of “David’s Father” so that everyone can tell he’s a giant? Munsch at Play Act Two will have your imagination firing with questions such as these. As with the original Munsch at Play, this volume gives readers/thespians eight of Robert Munsch’s tales transformed into stage plays for young performers. Readers familiar with Munsch’s live performances will recognize his distinct rhythmic and participatory elements within Watts’ adaptations. Readers will also enjoy Michael Martchenko’s kinetic illustrations, in his style so well-known from so many Munsch storybooks. Having said this, plays are to be performed on the stage, not just admired on the page. Irene N. Watts’ adaptations succeed for a variety of reasons. The stories have been thoughtfully selected and adapted to provide the variety that makes this sort of book worthwhile. There are stories that can be performed with a finite handful of players, such as “I Have to Go,” and there are stories whose castings can expand as much as you like, including “Pigs,” in which you may include “any number that the pigpen can accommodate.” Watts also includes detailed, approachable notes about staging. She tells readers about suitable spaces for staging each play, such as “works well as a theatre in the round” (“Show and Tell”). She also provides exhaustive lists of sets, costumes, and props for each play. Most stories require quite a few props, but these are often indicated as optional, and could be scavenged, made into a craft project, or conjured via imagination. Watts’ supporting documentation (lists, guidance, and recommendations) lessens the effort involved with getting each play “up on its feet.” This enables everyone involved to focus on the excitement of stories and vocal participation. It’s not likely that anybody will say “No, no, no, no, no” to Munsch at Play Act Two. Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Sarah PolkinghorneSarah is a Public Services Librarian at the University of Alberta. She enjoys all sorts of books.

Defining COPD: from simplistic approach to multilateral assessment of COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a multisystemic pathology, which cannot be characterized, diagnosed or assessed only by the severity of airflow limitation. Thus, it appears there is urgent unmet need of new approach in COPD. In this article we review the most recent multidimensional classification of COPD, based on analysis of functional and physiologic parameters, health status, and risk of exacerbations. A, B, C, D system will permit a more accurate risk stratification of patients. In addition, new trends are presented in assessment of COPD: from phenotypes, multidimensional indices, scale-free networks and diseasome to radical concept of P4 medicine (Personalized, Predictive, Preventive, and Participatory elements).

Documenting disappearing spaces: Erasure and remembrance in two high school closures.

As school closures are on the rise across the nation, it becomes important to study these disappearing spaces. We frame the recent rash of school closings and their impact on communities through the concept of erasure, which we see as the uprooting of a particular space to make room for innovation. In this article, we consider such examples of erasure, ghosts of institutional memory, and remembrance in disappearing or reconstituted sites: specifically, 2 high schools. We discuss commonalities and differences in the ways in which these concepts manifest across these 2 sites, the first taking place in the Northeast in the mid-1990s as reflective of community-led activism and teacher union collaboration and the second in the Midwest 10 years into federal and state school accountability reform efforts, where school closure is one of several interventions for schools struggling academically. Both sites were informed by methods that have participatory elements, an action orientation, and a deeply critical and historical lens. Influenced by Apfelbaum’s (2000) discussion of the obligation of remembrance and Fullilove’s (2004) reflection on “root shock” in urban renewal processes, we understand erasure as a deeply psychological response to failure and conflict. We conclude by reexamining the notion of productive conflict as a necessary element in educational change.

Reconsidering the role of public participation in the Finnish forest planning system

The article examines the role of public participation rights in the Finnish forest planning system and considers the need for improvement, with a particular focus on private forests. Public participation is approached here as one of the tools for achieving social and ecological sustainability in forestry. The paper shows that public participation rights are very limited in the forest planning and management schemes in Finland. Among other things, access to environmental information is restricted, which is exceptional in modern environmental and natural resource law. The article concludes that there is a need to strengthen the participatory elements in forest planning if the aim is to improve environmental and social sustainability in forestry.

Cost-Benefit Analysis in a Framework of Stakeholder Involvement and Integrated Coastal Zone Modeling

Active involvement of local stakeholders is currently an increasingly important requirement in European environmental regulations such as the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). The same is true for economic analyses such as cost-benefit analysis (CBA). For example, the Swedish WFD implementation requires i) quantification of cost and benefits of proposed measures and ii) stakeholder involvement. How can these two requirements be integrated in practice? And can such requirements facilitate implementation of projects with a potential net benefit? This paper presents a stepwise CBA procedure with participatory elements and applies it for evaluating nutrient management options for reducing eutrophication effects in the coastal area of Himmerfjarden SW of Stockholm, Sweden. The CBA indicates a positive net benefit for a combination of options involving increased nitrogen removal at a major sewage treatment plant, creation of new wetlands and connecting a proportion of private sewers to sewage treatment plants. The procedure also illustrates how the interdisciplinary development of a coupled ecological-economic simulation model can be used as a tool for facilitating the involvement of stakeholders in a CBA.

Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st-Century Performance (review)

Reviewed by: Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st-Century Performance Spencer Schaffner Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st-Century Performance. Edited by Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; pp. 240. An increasing number of contemporary performance forms involve new technologies. Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon's edited collection Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st-Century Performance, explores this highly technological present in the world of performance, suggesting that new technologies are augmenting, not replacing, the body in an array of experimental works. This collection tracks an emerging dialogue in contemporary performance between bodies and what science fiction writers have termed "the machines." Serving as a guide to this emergent field, Broadhurst and Machon's book shows how technologically rich performance forms explore, comment on, and, in some cases, critique the computer-integrated age in which we live. The collection consists of fifteen chapters written by practitioners and critics alike, each of which suggests that, despite the expanding variety of technological options available to artists, the body maintains its centrality in most performance texts. Instead of understanding the body as distinct from technology, however, the contributors to the collection describe performing bodies as one of several technologies used in any given performance. Innovative contemporary artists and companies demonstrate, this collection argues, that bodies are technological, and, reciprocally, that technologies can be understood through embodied performance. Not surprisingly, interactivity is a recurring theme here. Readers interested in how contemporary artists implement interactive digital-media forms in performance will find Troika Ranch, the Critical Art Ensemble, and Bodies in Flight particularly thought-provoking for the ways they use live relay cameras, neurological imaging, and computer software as active participatory elements in their staged work. As Broadhurst describes in the book's grounding first chapter, the New York City dance company Troika Ranch relies just as much on instrument data-interface and Open Sound Control software as it does on its dancers. Machines, in a sense, are part of the company. Performing with digitized and manipulated projections of their own forms, the members of Troika Ranch create an iterative conversation of movement: dance creates projected images, which inspire more dance. Neither dancer nor computer has primacy in this relationship, as the two reproduce each other's movements onstage. This theme of interactivity extends beyond the relationship between embodied performer and machine to include the audience. Tracey Warr's chapter "Texts from the Body" deals with Bruce Gilchrist's installations involving neurological imaging. In her detailed study of Gilchrist's work, Warr shows how technologically mediated installations of the kind that Gilchrist creates—in one such work, the artist sleeps while gallery-goers attempt to interact with his brainwaves—cannot be reduced to simple claims about the ubiquity of computing or encroaching industrial consumer culture. Indeed, many of the contributors to this collection argue that technology is a complicated means of engaging the body as a somatic reservoir of emotion and feeling. Sensualities, as Broadhurst and Machon's title suggests, are not necessarily diminished in supposedly sterile technologized encounters with computers, but instead, in some cases, are intensified. [End Page 486] No treatment of contemporary performance would be complete without a nod to some of the best-known and most provocative artists of our time. Accordingly, John Freeman considers John Leguizamo's work, Josephine Machon analyzes the plays of Caryl Churchill, and Stelarc discusses his own interactive piece "Prosthetic Head." The latter is one of the highpoints of the collection, as Stelarc's three-dimensional, animated chat-bot (gallery-goers converse with the virtual head in real time) captures both the fear and the fantasy of robots as human surrogates. Broadhurst and Machon are careful to balance the number of chapters about individual artists with as many about artistic collectives, both to avoid endorsing the idea of the lone genius and to highlight the importance of collaboration in much contemporary innovative art. In this collection, innovation is frequently identified with the technique of remix (the recombination of previously released and published materials), which is often used as a distinct form of politicized social commentary. Consider, for example, the dance...

NOD1 Activators Link Innate Immunity to Insulin Resistance

OBJECTIVEInsulin resistance associates with chronic inflammation, and participatory elements of the immune system are emerging. We hypothesized that bacterial elements acting on distinct intracellular pattern recognition receptors of the innate immune system, such as bacterial peptidoglycan (PGN) acting on nucleotide oligomerization domain (NOD) proteins, contribute to insulin resistance.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSMetabolic and inflammatory properties were assessed in wild-type (WT) and NOD1/2−/− double knockout mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD) for 16 weeks. Insulin resistance was measured by hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamps in mice injected with mimetics of meso-diaminopimelic acid–containing PGN or the minimal bioactive PGN motif, which activate NOD1 and NOD2, respectively. Systemic and tissue-specific inflammation was assessed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays in NOD ligand–injected mice. Cytokine secretion, glucose uptake, and insulin signaling were assessed in adipocytes and primary hepatocytes exposed to NOD ligands in vitro.RESULTSNOD1/2−/− mice were protected from HFD-induced inflammation, lipid accumulation, and peripheral insulin intolerance. Conversely, direct activation of NOD1 protein caused insulin resistance. NOD1 ligands induced peripheral and hepatic insulin resistance within 6 h in WT, but not NOD1−/−, mice. NOD2 ligands only modestly reduced peripheral glucose disposal. NOD1 ligand elicited minor changes in circulating proinflammatory mediators, yet caused adipose tissue inflammation and insulin resistance of muscle AS160 and liver FOXO1. Ex vivo, NOD1 ligand caused proinflammatory cytokine secretion and impaired insulin-stimulated glucose uptake directly in adipocytes. NOD1 ligand also caused inflammation and insulin resistance directly in primary hepatocytes from WT, but not NOD1−/−, mice.CONCLUSIONSWe identify NOD proteins as innate immune components that are involved in diet-induced inflammation and insulin intolerance. Acute activation of NOD proteins by mimetics of bacterial PGNs causes whole-body insulin resistance, bolstering the concept that innate immune responses to distinctive bacterial cues directly lead to insulin resistance. Hence, NOD1 is a plausible, new link between innate immunity and metabolism.

Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia’s Most Popular Music (review)

Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia's Most Popular Music. By Andrew Weintraub. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. [vi, 258 p. ISBN 9780195395662 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9780195395679 (paperback), $24.95.] Illustrations, index, music examples. Dangdut Stories offers first booklength study of dangdut in English. It contributes to studies of global popular musics, ethnomusicology, and Southeast Asian studies through an in-depth cultural study of a style of popular music that has been described by many as Indonesia's de facto national music. Unlike previous English-language studies that have largely focused on genre's relation to nationalism, Andrew Weintraub offers new areas of focus, including gender, class, ethnicity, and media. He shows how music is a vivid reflection of national politics and offers a detailed reading of dangdut as an aesthetic and practice in modern Indonesia (p. 13). To do this, Wein traub offers descriptive analyses of many significant dangdut (and predangdut) songs, writes about its lyrics (source of title's stories), and presents biographies of major performers. Con - sistent themes throughout include hybrid roots of dangdut (from sources as varied as Hindi film music, Jimi Hendrix, and Melayu music in Malacca Straits), music's status as a contact zone for issues of cultural hybridity, Islam in public life, role and representation of women in Indonesian society, and tensions between local and national musics in Indo nesia. The book is based on Wein traub's fieldwork, participant observation, interviews, music lessons, research on articles from popular print media, and Internet sources. The book may be divided into three sections. The first (chapters 2 and 3) explores roots and influences of proto dangdut; second (chapters 4, 5, and 6) traces development of genre in 1970s-1990s, with particular attention to major artists and political trends; and third (chapters 7 and 8) traces changes in dangdut since 1998. The first section describes debates over roots of genre, as major performers espouse conflicting stories about its genesis. Some (like Rhoma Irama) link it to Indonesian and Islamic roots in North Sumatran Melayu culture, while others (like Elvy Sukaesih) stress its status as a uniquely Indonesian and highly participatory form of music. This dichotomy illustrates book's central rhetorical device: dangdut is used by various and groups in various ways to accomplish disparate cultural and ends. When Rhoma Irama stresses Melayu roots, he claims dangdut as a precolonial and Islamic expression; when Elvy Sukaesih claims it as uniquely Indonesian, she focuses on music's emotional immediacy and participatory elements. Thus, talk about music in ways that constructs various ideological positions (p. 35). The first section also emphasizes culturally hybrid roots of dangdut. Musical traits of proto dangdut, established in these chapters and traced in more detail later in book, include poetic conventions, increasingly complex musical form, influences (instruments, melodies, and ornamentations) from Indian film music, and chalte rhythmic pattern (which, Wein - traub suggests, may have origins in India, Malaysia, or even Latin music). By 1970s these hybrid elements had assimilated into a new genre called dangdut. The book's second section traces dangdut from 1970s through late 1990s. Chapter 4 describes early associations between dangdut and the people (rakyat), suggesting that music's purported relationship to popular masses varied depending on who was describing music and why. This chapter also presents a biography of Rhoma Irama, King of Dangdut, and a discussion of his major recordings (pp. 93-106). Chapter 5 turns to 1980s, with a particular focus on representation of women in songs and musical films, with a particular case study of music by Elvy Sukaesih (the Queen of Dangdut, pp. …

Meeting the ‘multi-’ requirements in organic agriculture research: Successes, challenges and recommendations for multifunctional, multidisciplinary, participatory projects

AbstractOrganic farming is one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors worldwide, and funds to support research and extension activities that address the needs of organic producers are becoming more widely available in the USA. Solutions to problems in ecologically complex systems, such as organic farming systems often exceed the expertise of individual investigators or single disciplines. Further, the complex nature of ecological and social interactions within systems-based agricultural research requires not only more emphasis on information exchange but also synthesis between multidisciplinary teams of academic researchers and organic farmers. Accordingly, federal grant agencies that support organic agriculture research increasingly require that projects encompass multiple academic disciplines, multiple functions (research, outreach, education), and the participation of stakeholders for the ultimate purpose of the integration of knowledge. Many researchers, educators and administrators at land grant universities (LGUs) remain inexperienced in multidisciplinary, multifunctional and participatory research. Using post-completion project interviews of the project investigators on an organic transition project, we identified eight factors that affected the integration of knowledge from a farmer advisory board and the conduct of our multidisciplinary, participatory organic transition project. The first five factors include shared values, balance in technical competence, institutional capacity for research, team capacity for problem solving and institutional resistance. The research team also identified three other factors that evoked confusion and divergence during the project, and include the ambiguity of power and control of knowledge, the proposed experimental plan and terms of team engagement. We considered participatory elements of the project according to Biggs’ linear typology of participation, but found more appropriate Neef and Neubert's position that a linear scale of participatory approach is an inadequate framework for helping agricultural scientists to decide on whether and in which phases they want to, can and should incorporate participatory elements into their research projects. From these findings, we conclude with critical issues for academic research and extension teams to consider during the development and before conduct of these types of projects. We also offer recommendations for LGUs and other research institutions, and funding organizations, to facilitate multidisciplinary, multifunctional, participatory research.

Sustainable development and sustainable forestry: analogies, differences, and the role of flexibility

Various approaches have been developed to achieve sustainability in forestry, under changing social needs and, consequently, changing definitions of sustainability. This has led to the confusing situation in which various groups have different understandings of the meaning of ‘sustainability’. Likewise, the concepts utilized to achieve sustainability, often with a poorly defined objective, are sometimes not clear and/or inconsistent as a systematic overview regarding definitions and concepts is lacking. Based on a literature review, this paper discusses related terms such as sustainability, sustained yield management, sustainable forestry, sustainable forest management and sustainable development: their history, concepts and relationships, from a European perspective. Finally, flexibility is proposed as a solution to overcome the identified shortcomings at all scales, while focussing on the enterprise level. The origin of the sustainability concept in forestry was first driven by forest experts, while participatory elements have been considered since the more recent idea of sustainable development. Since then, much effort has been made to achieve intragenerational fairness by creating an improved participatory process. Concurrently, the original idea of sustainable forestry as long-term and future-oriented management, considering future generations’ needs fell behind. An increasing standing timber volume in Europe and the discussion on climate change brought new interest in how to cope with risks in the context of pervasive future uncertainties within the scope of promoting sustainable development. Although the consideration of risk has been concentrated on as a topic in forest science in recent years, studies have mainly focused on the enhancement of forest resistance against disturbances. However, precaution and risk avoidance alone are probably insufficient to achieve an improved sustainable development that focuses on intergenerational fairness, as these more defensive approaches may disregard important management opportunities involved with an uncertain future. A perhaps more promising approach, the idea of future options and the ability to respond to changing social and biophysical circumstances (i.e. flexibility) as criteria for sustainable development have only shown a shadowy existence up to now. To further develop the consistency of sustainability concepts, a shift of sustainability approaches from continuity towards flexibility options is proposed.