Overview

The purpose of this book is to showcase a range of approaches that consider learning and collaboration as central processes in agriculture and natural resources governance and management. These include four related and overlapping adaptive collaborative approaches -- Adaptive Collaborative Management, Participatory Action Research, Social Learning and Innovation Systems. Despite these being generated in different institutional domains with somewhat diverse epistemological and policy orientations, the authors show that there are common themes among these approaches. The book presents a review of various adaptive and collaborative approaches to management developed to cope with the social and biophysical complexity of natural resource systems, including case studies from Bangladesh, Ecuador, Nepal and Zimbabwe. The contexts range from farmer field schools, to floodplain management and community forestry. The authors provide rich accounts of how adaptive collaborative approaches were applied to synergise different types of learning, foster collaboration among stakeholders, and nurture innovative development processes. Through its introduction and conclusion chapters, the book establishes a clear theoretical approach and identifies a set of practical methodologies for combining different systems of knowledge in a way that generates and maximizes innovation and the translation of research into practice.

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9780415696531

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Reviews

'This impressive collection of articles is about how to enter the intimate improvisational space of everyday practice in ways that can reflexively bring together research with action. Reaffirming the activist potential of grounded field research, it is recommended reading for anyone wishing to be informed and transformative at the same moment.' and 'This book is about improvisation -- the structured act of freedom that creates change through the purposeful mixing of knowledge and desire. People who depend on and manage natural resources, like everyone else, live in hierarchies that are part of a stratified social wild in which everyone must be prepared to struggle for wellbeing. They muddle through with what they have, and must constantly learn and innovate and improvise to sustain. There are patterns in these improvisational acts. Some reflect repertoires of domination, others repertoires of resistance. There are repetitions. There are structures and rules. This great collection of articles is about how to enter this intimate improvisational space of the everyday in ways that can reflexively meld research with action. It is recommended reading for anyone wishing to be informed and transformative at the same moment.' - Dr. Jesse Ribot, Associate Professor of Geography and Affiliate, Beckman Insitute, University of Illinois.

This impressive collection of articles is about how to enter the intimate improvisational space of everyday practice in ways that can reflexively bring together research with action. Reaffirming the activist potential of grounded field research, it is recommended reading for anyone wishing to be informed and transformative at the same moment. -- Dr. Jesse Ribot, Associate Professor of Geography and Affiliate, Beckman Insitute, University of Illinois.

Author Information

Hemant Ojha is a Research Fellow with Research Into Use, UK and a founder and Executive Coordinator of ForestAction Nepal. Andy Hall is Team Leader of the Central Research Team with Research Into Use, UK and a senior researcher at UNU-MERIT where he coordinates the Learning Innovation and Knowledge initiative on rural innovation from his base in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Rasheed Sulaiman V is Asia Team Leader of the Central Research Team with Research Into Use, UK and Director of the Centre for Research on Innovation and Science Policy, Hyderabad, India.

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