Co-Learning for Community Resilience

Stewart Barr and Ewan Woodley

Outline

• Four propositions;

• Conventional approaches to risk communication;

• Challenging the orthodoxy:

– The Neo-liberal setting. The ‘choice architectures’ of risk management and

– The Neo-liberal setting. The ‘choice architectures’ of risk management and communication;

– STS studies and the challenging of ‘normal science’;

– Un-packing the assumptions of the deficit model.

• Beyond ‘Expert and lay’? Pragmatic pedagogies of climate change, risk and uncertainty through co-learning.

1. Linking hazards and climate change through place

Risk Society

• Reflexive modernisation:

“Risks, as opposed to older dangers, are consequences which relate to the threatening force of modernisation and its globalisation of doubt. They are politically reflexive” (Beck, 1992, p. 21)p. 21)

“The naive certainties of the Enlightenment...have disintegrated, resulting in individuals’ need to seek and invest new certainties for themselves...Lay people have become sceptical about science, because they are aware science has produced many of the risks...People must therefore deal with constant insecurity and uncertainty” (Lupton, 2013, p. 87)

Paradigms of managing risk

• Hard –Controlling -engineered –physical;

• Soft – managed –socio-political

• Soft – managed –socio-politicaland cultural(McEntire, 2005)

“Historically, disaster management planning in

North America has been viewed from a para-

military perspective...; that is, it has been

conducted for, not with, the community”

(Pearce, 2003, p. 211)

• Three key forms:

– Engineering;

– Ecological;

– Evolutionary.

• Resilience as “...a pervasive idiom of global governance” (Walker and Cooper, 2011, p. 144);

Resilient Communities

144);

• Questioning current epistemologies of resilience (MacKinnon and Derickson, 2012).

Science Controversies and ‘claim making’

Climate Science Controversies

2. Conventional approaches to risk communication

“The floods of last year caused the country’s largest peacetime emergency since World War II. The impact of climate change means that the probability of events on a similar scale happening in

Key challenges:

• Priority of national resilience;

• Quality of flood warnings;

• Flood risk management and local authorities;the probability of events on

a similar scale happening in future is increasing. So the Review calls for urgent and fundamental changes in the way the country is adapting to the likelihood of more frequent and intense periods of heavy rainfall” (Pitt Review, 2008, p. vii).

and local authorities;

• Rescue co-ordination;

• Advice, education and engagement of publics.

Communicating Risk: lessons from the

past

• Two examples of risk

communication:

– Anti-smoking – Anti-smoking

advertisement 1;

– Anti-smoking

advertisement 2.

Conventional approaches to risk communication: expertisation

Conventional approaches to risk communication

Psychological:

• Focus on the individual;

• Draws on traditional

‘scientific method’;

See: Drabek (1999), Johnston

et al. (1999); Mileti and

O’Brien (1992); Paton

(2003); Pine (2009); Slovic

(2013); Weinstein et al.

(2000); Shaw et al. (2004).

‘scientific method’;

• Quantitative methods;

• Objectification.

Conventional approaches to risk communication

Paton, 2003, p. 214

The emergence of ‘behavioural change’ and

‘choice architercutres’

“We all – governments, businesses, families and communities, the public sector, voluntary and community organisations – need to make different choices if we are to achieve the vision of sustainable the vision of sustainable development”

(DEFRA, 2005, p. 25)

High ability and

willingSegment willingness

and ability

Ability to act High

Willing

to Act5: Cautious participants

I do a couple of things to help

2: Waste watchers

‘Waste not, want not’ that’s

important, you should live life

thinking about what you are

doing and using.

12%

1: Positive greens

I think it’s important that I do as

much as I can to limit my impact

on the environment.

18%

3: Concerned

consumers

I think I do more than a lot of

people. Still, going away is

important, I’d find that hard to

give up..well I wouldn’t, so carbon

off-setting would make me feel

better.

14%

7: Honestly

disengaged

Maybe there’ll be an

environmental disaster, maybe

not. Makes no difference to me,

I’m just living life the way I want

Low potential and

unwilling Low

High

Low

I do a couple of things to help

the environment. I’d really like

to do more, well as long as I

saw others were.

14%

4: Sideline supporters

I think climate change is a big

problem for us. I know I don’t

think much about how much water

or electricity I use, and I forget to

turn things off..I’d like to do a bit

more.

14%

I’m just living life the way I want

to.

18%

6: Stalled starters

I don’t know much about

climate change. I can’t afford

a car so I use public

transport.. I’d like a car

though.

10%

Source: DEFRA (2008)

2. Challenging the orthodoxy

A. The Neo-liberal context:

• Gilg-Selman spectrum of state-led policy options for environmental management:

– Regulation;– Regulation;

– Disincentives;

– Incentives;

– Exhortation.

• Moved to citizen-led, ‘co-production’ of polices as the state is ‘rolled back’ (Jessop).

Citizen-consumers as agents of change

“Citizenship is not dead, or dying, but found in new places, in life-politics” (Scammell, 2000, p. 351)

The citizen-consumer (Johnson (2008, p. 232):“…implies a social practice that can satisfy

competing ideologies of consumerism (an ideal rooted in individual self-interest) and competing ideologies of consumerism (an ideal rooted in individual self-interest) and citizenship (an ideal rooted in collective responsibility to a social and ecological commons)”.

Citizen-consumers indicative of (Slocum, 2004, p. 765):

“…an outgrowth of classical liberal theory that universalises the logic of the market for all institutions”, creating ‘passive’ citizens and challenges to progressive politics.

A de-politicised Sustainable Development

“The concern here is that sustainable development is seen as reformist, but it mostly avoids questions of power, exploitation, even redistribution. The need for more fundamental social and need for more fundamental social and political change is simply ignored. Instead, critics argue, proponents of sustainable development offer an incrementalistagenda that does not challenge any existing entrenched powers or privileges” (Robinson, 2004, 376).

B. Science: the unquestionable orthodoxy?

Critical human geography and STS:

“This somewhat heterogeneous body of work has challenged the self-image of science as an epistemologically objective and value-free study of the self-evident (once discovered) facts evident (once discovered) facts of a real and ontologically objective world” (Demerrit, 2001b, p. 645)

See also: Wynne (1992), Demeritt(1996; 2001a; 2001b), Oppenheimer (2005) and Schneider (2001).

“Many of these assumptions are

informal and negotiated by

relatively small communities of

investigators. Others are not

formally acknowledged because

they emerge out of the interactions

of scientists within a wider

epistemic community of research

scientists and policy makers”

(Demeritt, 2001a, p. 328)

C. Rationality, expertisation and logical

positivism Jones et al. (2011):

“using the new sciences of choice from psychology, economics and the neurosciences – as well as appealing to an improved understanding of decision-making and behaviour understanding of decision-making and behaviour change – a libertarianpaternalist mode of governing is being promoted in the UK (2011, p. 15).

Rationality, expertisation and logical positivism

Owens (2000, p. 1141) characterises ‘deficit’ approaches thus: “lay people are ignorant of environmental science and irrational in their response to risks: the public must be

• Beyond rationality;

• Questioning

expertisation;

• Questioning objectivist

See: Owens (2000), Whatmore et al. (2011).

irrational in their response to risks: the public must be engaged in order to be better informed and converted to a ‘more objective’ view.”

• Questioning objectivist

approaches.

4. Knowledge

frameworks and

community

resilience in an

age of age of

anthropogenic

climate change

Community resilience and flood

planning

Responding to the challenges of:

• Community resilience –beyond the individual;

• Long-lasting impacts;

Whittle et al. (2010, pp. 11-12) argue that resilience in this context can be about:

• Resistance;• Long-lasting impacts;

• Lack of engagement of publics.

• Resistance;

• Bounce-back;

• Adaptation;

• Transformation.

Carnegie Trust (2011):

Four key characteristics of communities that are becoming more resilient:

• Healthy and engaged people

Community resilience and flood planning

Healthy and engaged people

• An inclusive culture creating a positive sense of place

• A localising economy –towards sustainable food, energy, housing etc.

• Strong links to other places and communities

New agendas in the social sciences emerging from STS (Whatmore, 2009):

• Tackling epistemic

Engaging Publics and co-producing knowledges

• Tackling epistemic hegemony;

• Exploring and challenging knowledge hierarchies;

• Challenging conventional scientific methods;

• Understanding publics.

Engaging Publics and co-producing knowledges

Leads to forms of:

• Citizen science;

• Social learning;

• Knowledge co-

“...the answer to the question

of what makes public science a more effective

public good resides not in its subservience to

governmental or commercial agendas ...This

places the onus on diversifying

the publics with whom scientists collaborate• Knowledge co-production;

• Radical scientific method

(Blewitt, 2006; Lane et al., 2011; Ross et

al., 2012)

the publics with whom scientists collaborate

on matters that concern them, and on the

terms on which they do so. It should also...involve

redistributions of environmental expertise in

which the inventiveness of social scientists comes

to the fore in the design and conduct of research

practices that stage more and different

opportunities for new knowledge polities to

emerge” (Whatmore, 2009, p. 596).

Building flood knowledges:

Co-producing knowledges

“To examine the production and

circulation of environmental

knowledge in relation to rural land

management and the ways in which

the creative potential of ‘knowledge

“We wanted to try out what happens when

local people and academics are involved in the

knowledge production process from the outset

through an experiment in doing

(flood risk) science differently” (Lane et al.,

2011, p. 17).

the creative potential of ‘knowledge

controversies’ can be positively

harnessed in the practice of

interdisciplinary public science” (Lane

et al., 2011, p. 16).

Case study of Pickering. See Lane et al. (2011), Landstrom et al. (2011), Whatmore (2009).

Scientific controversies: the Ryedale Flood

Research Group

• Place-based research;

• Non-standard ‘data’ included;

• Greater acceptance because of the methodology deployed.

“What we have done here is moved the idea that a model should travel to one where the process of model building should travel.” (Lane et al., 2011, p. 30).

deployed.

Co-producing flood knowledges : the River Barle

Project

• The problem;

• The approach;

Co-producing flood knowledges : the River Barle

Project

• The workshop.

• Key experiences and challenges:

• Flood warning times and system;

• Land management:

• Woodland management;

• Grassland management;

Co-producing flood knowledges : the River Barle

Project

• Priorities:

• Hearing from those who’ve experienced flooding;

• A strategy for engaging landowners;

• Understanding the • Grassland management;

• Recreation and compaction.

• ‘Education’;

• Engagement;

• Planning and development;

• Contested assets, e.g. Dulverton Bridge;

• Community resilience, in advance of and after a flood.

• Understanding the history of flooding;

• Uplifting and embedding the local flood resilience plan.

Summary

• Converging issues of hazard resilience and anthropogenic climate change;

• Moving beyond information-dependent approaches;

• Recognising:

• The political economy of current approaches;

The value-laden nature of science • The value-laden nature of science and ‘expertisation’;

• The limitations of information-deficit models;

• The contested notion of ‘resilience.

• Exploring:

• New forms of engagement;

• New forms of local politics and democracy;

• Place-based approaches to knowledge co-production.