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Beyond Positionalities – Engaging with academic and willful resistance through complex communication
No full textDominant framings of development research often focus on limited notions of responsibility as part of research and may fail to recognise the agency and willfulness of the marginalised. This paper conceptualises a deconstruction of responsibility through Sara Ahmed’s ‘Willful Subject’
and María Lugones’s ‘Complex Communication’. Willfulness is a diagnosis of the failure to comply with the authority of the dominant. Complex communication contributes to practices of self-construction, including resistances to dominance. Through a reflexive re-examination of field encounters and deep conversations with community members impacted by large-scale land investment schemes in southwest Tanzania, the paper achieves two objectives. First, it highlights moments that require researchers to interrogate how they may fail to represent resistances if they are not open to self construction. Second, it demonstrates that being responsible (for) is about co-determining the specific ways in which
researchers willfully align their actions with the struggles of the marginalised Other
The Housing Crisis Paradox: Analysing the crisis amidst the social and political narratives
No full textThe housing conversation is littered with normative narratives. These are the elements of the discourse which are so routinely accepted that we take their justification for granted, and consequently, we routinely fail to rigorously test and challenge their validity. The housing crisis is one such narrative, and alongside it, our cultural embeddedness in housing commodification. Such a narrative problem for housing is important, particularly when it is not recognised as such, for it allows the conversation to conflate and obfuscate the issues. This thesis identifies both the representation of the crisis as a supply-based problem and our aspirational preference for ownership tenure as paradoxes, which serve only to entrench housing as a wicked problem and close down opportunities for problem resolution.
This study applied a mixed methodological approach to explore how such normative narratives hold up under evidence-based scrutiny, particularly in light of the policydriven narrative which centres upon a ‘broken market’ for housing at the heart of the housing crisis. Collating a unique data set from more than 60 national statistical collections and thematically reviewing the responses of 128 observers of the Mass Observation Project on the issues of homelessness and social mobility; this study identified distinct dissonances between the evidence and both a policy-driven narrative for housing focussed upon aspirational issues of ownership, and a publicperception based narrative concerned with an absolute housing need. Here this thesis offers an important contribution to the future of the housing conversation, by evidencing the case for alternative engagements in housing.
Building from this collective evidence base, this thesis then presents an alternate narrative centred upon a continuum of housing issues between dichotomies of ‘need’ and ‘aspiration’. This is offered as a platform from which a renewed conversation in housing might be built. In a further contribution to the knowledge bank, this thesis then concludes with a tested proposal for community engagement in housing which reimagines the market mechanism for the distribution of property wealth and seeks to break down cultural barriers in tenure
Citizen preferences for supporting farmers in sustainable rural management: An analysis of five biogeographically differentiated European countries
No full textFarmers' adoption of sustainable practices is important if rural management is to deliver against environmental targets. Developing policies that enable such practices requires the support of broader society, including citizens with differing priorities and values related to e.g. food production and environmental protection. The aim of this research was to investigate European citizens' attitudes towards different approaches to promoting sustainable practices among farmers (financial incentivisation for adopters, technical advice regarding traditional methods, and technical advice regarding innovative technological approaches) as well as personal and environmental drivers of these attitudes from a Social Cognitive Theory perspective. Online survey data were analysed from 3,190 citizens in the Czech Republic (n = 649), Spain (n = 623), Sweden (n = 645), Switzerland (n = 641), and the UK (n = 632). These countries represented biogeographical regions with different habitat conditions and roles for agriculture within their national economies. The results indicated that participants from all of the five countries expressed a moderate to high level of support for financial incentivisation, with Swiss participants showing the lowest level of support. A similar range of moderate to high support was shown for technical advice on traditional methods and innovative technological approaches, with traditional methods receiving greater support than innovative approaches in all countries except for Spain. A two-step cluster analysis based on participants' perceptions of ecosystem service benefits in, and threats to, rural areas identified four segments within the participant sample: ‘rural ES benefits-focused citizens’, ‘citizens moderately engaged in rural multifunctionality’, ‘citizens highly engaged in rural multifunctionality’, and ‘ecocentric citizens’. Multiple regression analyses showed that highly engaged citizens tended to have the highest levels of support for all three approaches to promoting sustainable practices, whereas moderately engaged citizens demonstrated the lowest levels of support. Individuals with stronger preservationist environmental attitudes, and with higher trust in farmers and landowners, were associated with greater support. The results provide evidence for guiding future citizen engagement and policymaking related to pro-environmental rural management initiatives
SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES IN WATER MANAGEMENT
Get PDF• Water is a unique and finite resource that all users (humans, agriculture, and the environment) need to survive. However, supply is both diminishing and highly uncertain in the future due to climate change, driving intense competition between users. This situation demands we urgently teach and adopt sustainable water management for the benefit of all.
• Successful sustainable water management depends on careful measurement, good quality information, high levels of caution, and flexible arrangements that are challenging to design and implement. However, most of us are also unwilling to give our water up.
• Innovative sharing and reallocation of water resources offer a modern basis for teaching sustainable outcomes condensed to supply and demand concepts. Yet these concepts also face problems, which we discuss here for structuring effective teaching.
• Sustainable water management is a shared problem requiring shared adjustment, which has proven challenging to achieve in the past. However, the current pressures on inequitable supply, increasingly variable supply, and uncertainty are increasing the urgency for reform
The Effect of Long-Term Underlying Management on Soil Faunal Communities of a Newly Established Herbal Ley
No full textSoil ecosystems support a diverse range of life essential for a functioning soil. However, agricultural establishment methods like
tillage intensity have been shown to directly affect soil fauna populations. Soil fauna diversity and abundance were investigated
following a 10-year experiment testing different crop establishment systems in an arable crop rotation. Large plots (30×100m)
within a randomised block design were established using either a plough-based system, minimum tillage or no tillage using a direct drill. Significant differences were found between the cultivation systems for several biological groups together with seasonal
differences. Overall, total mesofauna was greatest in minimum and no till plots having greater numbers of cari, total Collembola
and collembolan superfamilies oduromorpha and Symphypleona. Nematode abundance was also greater in the minimum and no
till plots. Although total earthworm abundance did not differ between cultivations, there were differences between functional
groups with anecic species being more prevalent in the least disturbed soils. Overall, findings demonstrated that the effects of
long-term tillage treatments are visible across the whole soil food web. This could have long term impacts on ecosystem services
even when land management has changed to a conservation focus. Further analysis did not find any clear linkage between soil
physical assessments which could be useful as soil biological indicators
Contribution of pollinators to delivering fruit quality in commercial sweet cherry orchards
Get PDFBackground: Pollinators provide an essential ecosystem service to many crops, includingsweet cherry (Prunus avium), which can be quantified in terms of fruit number and/orquality. Most studies in sweet cherry have explored the extent to which fruit set relieson pollinators but have neglected pollinators’ contribution to fruit quality. We investi-gated the impact of pollinators on fruit set (2018–2019) and fruit quality (2017–2019).In 10 commercial sweet cherry orchards under polytunnels, we conducted insect-exclusion experiments comparing insect-excluded blossoms (mesh-bagged blossoms) toblossoms exposed to floral visitors (open blossoms). We then investigated relationshipsbetween fruit set and fruit quality.Results: Pollinators were key to underpinning commercial fruit set (15.4% fruit set fromopen blossoms compared to 1.1% with bagged blossoms), equivalent to a contribution of92.8%. Pollinators were also essential to achieving higher cherry fruit quality. With openblossoms, fresh mass, width, dry matter, and flesh/pit ratio of cherries increased by19.8%, 7.9%, 19.8%, and 10.5%, respectively, compared to cherries from bagged blos-soms. In contrast, firmness was similar between both pollination treatments. We did notfind a significant relationship between fruit set and quality, suggesting trees did not carryan excessive fruit burden.Conclusion: Our results highlight the importance of pollinators, not only for underpin-ning commercial yields in terms of fruit set, but also for higher fruit quality. We recom-mend growers adopt effective pollinator management practices to help underpincommercially viable yields consisting of fruit with a higher marketable potential
Chemical analysis of elephant dung as a potential organic fertilizer in Malawian agricultural systems: a preliminary study
No full textSoil fertility decline and land degradation threaten food security and ecosystem health across sub-Saharan Africa, including Malawi. Our preliminary study provides a chemical characterization of elephant dung to establish a foundation for evaluating its potential as an organic fertilizer in Malawian agroecosystems. We compared the nutrient content and chemical properties of elephant dung with common organic
and synthetic fertilizers. Our findings indicate that elephant dung exhibits chemical properties comparable to other organic fertilizers commonly used in Malawi, including a neutral to slightly alkaline pH (7.21–7.71), moderate electrical conductivity (736–913 mS/m), and a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (21.89–25.07) suitable for slowrelease soil amendment. We assess these properties against relevant standards such as those set by the European Union for organic fertilizers. This chemical analysis suggests that elephant dung merits further investigation through comprehensive field trials to determine its agricultural efficacy. Should such field trials demonstrate benefits, the application of elephant dung as a fertilizer could potentially create valuable connections between conservation and agriculture. While this study focuses
exclusively on chemical properties, it provides essential baseline data to inform future research exploring whether elephant dung could contribute to both sustainable
agriculture and biodiversity conservation efforts