Transcript Slide 1

Topics for discussion
•Report on the EDS conference Conflict in Paradise: the
transformation of rural New Zealand
•Generating a sense of what’s happening in biological economies
(outline the working tasks)
•Projects broader directions and goals – frames and phrases
•Reviewing results of tasks so far and discussion: people, projects
and workshops
Environmental Defence Society conference.
Conflict in Paradise: the transformation of rural
New Zealand
• Two-day conference on issues and solutions
• Ostensibly about many things, but heavily focused on water quality
and in particular the dairy industry’s contribution to this.
• ‘science’ respected and many claims to be a scientist,
“as a scientist I…”, “need the science to back things up” said many
times
• little acknowledgement of social sciences role in understanding and
working with the issues and solutions identified
• Science seen as the solution because once know bio-physical
processes = can fix them
• Social science practically invisible, but a large role to play, or to get
people to recognize it is playing – in the how we ‘fix’(or even if fix is
right)
• Sciencemakers there in force
Tasks
• Tracing geography people
– Where are they in the literature/what frontiers are they pushing
– Particularly connections with biology and management issues,
biophysical process, overlap with geography
– Names on the list so far
Paul Robbins
Sarah Whatmore
Susanne Freidberg
Henry Buller
Neil Ward
Mike Goodman
Julie Guthman
Joanna Govern
James McCarthy
Ian Cook
Becky Mansfield
• Tracing terms in wider social science literature
– E.g. eco-verification, resilience, ‘biological economies’
• Tracing through policy
– Use of key terms/ideas, e.g. the terms/ideas there or not, or anything
else with a different name that is the same thing
• Tracking conferences/symposia
• Review journal coverage for
Connections with biology
Narrates the world in different ways
New language that highlights social science
Biophysical processes
Where sciences meet social sciences
Expertise
Knowledge construction (particularly around the environment)
• Journals on the list so far
Sociologia Ruralis, Journal of Rural Studies, Geoforum, Environment and
Planning A, Agriculture and Human Values, Natural Resources and
Society
Broader goal of these tasks
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Bring together a range of interests to think supply chain analysis
differently. Actors, meanings, messages, movements – following objects.
New connections.
Try and understand how knowledge operates (in those supply chains).
Expertise.
Thinking about knowledge production and how this can perform the
world into something different
Positioning social science in the New Zealand context. Destroy the
othering of social science against ‘natural’ science. How is social science
being deployed?
Biological economies a good context in which to start thinking New Zealand
social science differently
– Can we use this focus to narrate the world in slightly different ways
– To find a new language that enables us to engage in key policy debates that
centre social science
– Into what new sites/organisation/institution/ministries can we go if we have
some stories?
– Change from thinking researchers as technicians to researchers as thinkers
Biological economies
• phrases gathered that I think begin to contribute to its
meaning
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Socio-technical practice/arrangements
Socio-ecological
Networks that tie together
Apparatus of calculation, technologies of organisation,
measurement, calculation and representation, organising work
practical work of bringing it into being
Competing projects
Participating in making sites where facts/knowledges can survive
Nature of expertise, location of expertise
Economy of possibilities
Enactment, alter and practices to perform new futures into
existence
Chain making (active connections, relations etc) not the content
(of the chain) that is important (Latour)
emergence
– Changing positioning of priorities from social, economic and
environmental to ecological, social and economic.
– Shifting from environment to ecology
– Biophysical processes
– Thinking policy differently
– Raising visibility of social science (by not making it the other
defined against science)
– Strengthening connections of biophysical processes and
relations
– Focused through supply chains of dairy and wine in order to
provide the concepts of knowledge production and reconfiguring
social science a context in which to be worked through
– Production of biological, economic-geographic knowledge
– Interconnected
– Interacting in multiple networked places
– About ‘vital’ and life …
New Zealand context
institutional
‘hot topic’ conferences sustainability
Biological economies
project
Projects and thinking
Focusing ideas
• Rethinking supply chain
• Science meets social
science (or is that social
science meets science?)
• Rethinking (location
of/nature of) expertise
International work
projects
people
New Zealand context
Institutional
‘hot topic’ conferences sustainability
• Pipfruit – a sustainable future. Pipfruit New
Zealand Inc. August 2008
• Running hot interconnection: New Zealand
science in the 21st century. MoRST
sponsored science leadership groups.
October 2008
• Nga Kete a Rehua: inaugural Maori
research symposium Te Waipounamu
September 2008
• New Zealand sustainable land use forum.
Coming out of the environmental defence
society.
• Institute of food, science and technology –
sustainability theme at annual conference
• Others to be added … do you know of any?
• Addressed three questions
– What is gained by re-thinking supply chains as
biological economies?
– How do we study biological economies?
– Does this thinking help to reposition economic
geography in a politics of knowledge production
conditioned by a nexus of influences such as climate
change, food questions, and water concerns?
Biological economies
project
Projects and thinking
• Engage with dairying, development of calculus
and practices, values and expertise, which is a
window into the New Zealand scene
• Discussion (Caroline Saunders and Sally van
de Zijp sustainable winegrowing) that exposed
the way that social science and the New
Zealand context was reduced to a process to
produce information not about the production
ideas
• EDS conference experience, even where social
science reported on, unacknowledged and
deliberately made invisible
• Taking the ecological as a starting point OR
taking multiple beginnings as the starting point,
both have enactments in common, making a
different world , knowledge production is
enacted
Meetings/events
• More-than-human modes of enquiry –Whatmore workshop, Australia
November 08
• Nature and supernatures–Henry Buller, Exeter University September
08
• Add to this list …
Projects
• E.g. Habitable cities: civic spaces and ecological practices (Whatmore)
• Capacity building project on bringing together natural and social
science perspectives on understanding diffuse pollution (Whatmore)
• Eating biodiversity: an investigation of the links between quality food
production and biodiversity production (Buller)
• The integration of biodiversity knowledges and policies into agricultural
policy reform in the UK (Buller)
• Complexity and contingency: innovating explanation in
human/environment geography (Robbins)
• Geographies of insects and institutions: mosquito governance in the
US southwest (Robbins)
• Fresh: a perishable history (Freidberg)– social and technological
history of freshness
• Supermarkets and imperial knowledge (Freidberg)– culture and power
relations of food provisioning, relationships shaped by ecological and
colonial histories
International
work
projects
people
Following people: Sarah Whatmore
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Is interested in where knowledge is from, recognizing multiple expertises and
contexts as knowledge
Lots of her work is engaging with ‘science’, where social science meet science
e.g. water politics, re figuring property through bio resources etc
Is also involved in rethinking work
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Habitable cities – rethinking environmental knowledge
“capacity building project on bringing together natural and social science perspectives on
understanding diffuse pollution”
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Example of repositioning science as helper not leader per se in projects
Capacity building – thinking differently through recognizing diverse knowledges
This kind of work acknowledges performing new understandings
Quite a lot of work on ecological and/or environmental topics  New ways of
approaching New Zealand’s concerns (environmental issues) in ways that prioritise
social science?
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Mostly engaged with other universities – UK and also Australia
mostly research council funded but … a variety of these
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Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Rural Economy and Land Use programme (RELU)-though funded by ESRC
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Policymakers (e.g. in the capacity building project), other science institutions,
government agencies (e.g. DEFRA, environment agency), NGOs
One project is with French and Belgian research teams
Themes of interest
• More than human currents in socio-ecological and humanities research
• City dwellers, green, living cities, social science engaged in policy debates
• More than human, political implications, reshaping thinking
• Technological natures, how nature and other material forms are assembled
• Environmental knowledges, ecologies, biogeographies
• a little through food
Titles of current research projects
• Environmental knowledge controversies: sciences, democracy and expertise
• Scientific ecotourism and (post) colonial encounters with wildlife
• the stuff of politics: techno-science, democracy and public life
• Sustainable consumption: social contestation and consumer action
• Locating techno-science: geographies of science, technology and politics
• Habitable cities: civic spaces and ecological practices
• Eloquent materials: the witness of matter in science and law
New Zealand context
institutional
‘hot topic’ conferences sustainability
• What are the connections and
interactions?
Biological economies • Others doing things that fit?
International work
That
can
be
learnt
from?
project
• How does New Zealand context projects
Projects and thinking
relate to overseas?
people
• Where are the constellations of
expertise? Being mobilised in
particular ways
• Ideas for rethinking supply
chains, starting all science
projects with social science etc
Eco-verification
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Quick search reveals that various
government departments are
interested in/pushing this concept
(Ministry for the Environment, Ministry
of Economic Development, Ministry of
Fisheries etc)
have launched a website to help the
public with their eco-verification.
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www.med.govt.nz/ecolabels
The ecolabel directory is a joint
initiative between the Ministry of
Economic Development and Ministry
for the Environment, as part of the Ecoverification work programme.
Looking at the first three pages from
Google reveals this to be almost
exclusively government related
websites.
On p3 organisations such as
Landcare, Roading New Zealand and
Russell McVeagh appear in relation to
the government’s initiative