DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
DRAFT Research Design: Tilling the Fields of Knowledge Alice-Marie Archer Sustainable Places Institute
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
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DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer Contents: Figures: ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Key Methodological Concepts ......................................................................................................................................... 4 The Missing Middle ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 Convergence ...................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Convergence Quadrant Model Tool ................................................................................................................... 8 Socio-‐Technical Systems Framework ................................................................................................................. 10 Networking up – Emergent Organisational Forms ....................................................................................... 13 Niche Pervasivity ......................................................................................................................................................... 16 Research Aims ..................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................................................... 19 Epistemological Ecosystem ........................................................................................................................................... 20 Transdiciplinary and Systems Science ............................................................................................................... 20 Critical realism .............................................................................................................................................................. 24 The internal Conversation ................................................................................................................................. 29 Morphogenetic Analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 30 Retroduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 31 Place Based Approaches ..................................................................................................................................... 31 Epistemological Ecosystem – Remarks .............................................................................................................. 32 Research Design – Methodological Approach ....................................................................................................... 34 Stakeholder Selection ................................................................................................................................................ 35 The Initial list of Networked-‐Up organisations put forward for this research ........................... 35 Geographical Scope of this study .................................................................................................................... 36 Step 2. Agent Mental Models ................................................................................................................................... 37 System Structures – Causal Loop Diagrams and Converge Quadrant Tool ........................................ 38 Patterns and Relationships ...................................................................................................................................... 41 Spatial Network Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 41 Research Timeline ............................................................................................................................................................. 44 References ............................................................................................................................................................................ 45 Figures: Figure 1 The Missing Middle and Her Tributaries ................................................................................................. 4 Figure 3: The CONVERGE Quadrant tool in practice -‐ Vadovics et al 2013 ................................................. 9 Figure 4: The Multi Level Perspective on System Transitions -‐ Geels & Schott, 2007 ........................ 12 Figure 6: The Food Value Chain and Emerging Organisational Forms ...................................................... 14 Figure 8 : Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider's Web, 2009. Photo: Alessandro Coco © Tomás Saraceno ................................................................................. 23 Figure 9 Looking outwards from the Chesil at the end of a south-‐westerly gale. The wind had eased but there was still a swell running producing waves. This was a spring low tide, but there is still very little of the chesil above the waterline. (c) Ed Harland Licensed for reuse under a creative commons license (16/02/2007). ................................................................................. 26 Figure 10: The Multi Level Perspective of the Socio-‐technological systems framework is up-‐ended to demonstrate its compatibility with the deepening levels of enquirey prescribed by critical realism ......................................................................................................................................................... 28 Figure 11: The Retroductive approach of Critical Realism for Knowledge Creation -‐ Zachariadis et al (2013) .................................................................................................................................................................... 31
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Introduction
There is / was a missing middle space in the UK food system that harks predominantly from post-war centralization and the green revolution. Its complex and fuzzy in its framing but essentially describes a rift of scales across psycho-social and spatial constructs of the food system. Now – in the last decade - new types of organization are emerging in that missing middle space. They look like they might be bridging some of the challenges that make up the missing middle and they are fundamentally different to predecessor organisations. Instead of making the transition towards greater market share by growing and scaling up, they network-up to create what look like webby pockets of an emergent new normal. I want to study these networking-up organisations and in the process use and adapt the sociotechnical systems framework (STSF) to enable the study of networking-up transitions. I in particular want to understand the timeline (shifting sociotechnological form) of connecting-up transition pathways in order to elucidate leverage points and systemic interventions for progress towards greater sustainability. In line with this I have developed a new quantitative tool for the STSF toolbox that I want to test- Niche Pervasivity. Niche pervasivity is a measure the degree of presence or permeation of a concept or organisation based on the number and quality of its network connections and uses spatial and relational network analysis as its main instruments. This isn’t science-for-science sake. In the design of this research I seek to ensure it’s (albeit academic) contribution to the transition towards a sustainable food system, through the investigation of if and how convergent transitions as performed by networking-up could form part of this transition. In this respect, this research has the overarching normative aim of contributing towards what Pohl and Hadorn in their Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research refer to as ‘common good’ (Pohl and Hadorn 20072). This document describes how I intend to undertake this research and why, proposing a 3 phase process examining Agent Mental Models, System Structures and Patterns and Relationships. The methodological instruments combine the qualitative approaches of snowball sampling, Interviews, CLD , Converge Quadrant, with quantitative approaches of spatial network analysis and system dynamics. The philosophical predisposition of the research can be considered a constellation of epistemological constructs connecting quantitative concerns with a more qualitative reflection on the nature of the knowledge-making process, of social reality and putting weight on place as the locus for tilling the fields of knowledge for this research.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Key Methodological Concepts The Missing Middle The missing middle isn't ‘one’ thing – in fact, it's more like a syndrome or web of challenges and rifts in the food system that have in common a psycho-social rift operating between scales. In my literature review, aswell as outlining some of the fundamental sustainability concerns of the food system, I began to pull together 5 conceptual areas that start to articulate the missing middle's fuzzy framing: The 5 conceptual areas of the missing middle space: (1) the difficulty for AFN and Conventional producers and retailers to interconnect, (2) the general lack of meso-scale businesses as opposed to microentrepreneurs and corporations, (3) the gap between local scale and conventional scale food systems in terms of 'place’, (4) the lack of mid-scale infrastructure for processing and distribution and (5) the lack of consumer participation in the conventional food system. I like to think of the missing middle's conceptual framing as made up of many tributaries, none of which can be used in isolation to describe the river itself:
Figure 1 The Missing Middle and Her Tributaries
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Convergence
This research uses the concept of Convergence and Convergent transition pathways to frame the normative research question - how do we move towards a sustainable food system? Convergence is a subset of sustainable development: “Convergence in sustainability sciences refers to mechanisms and pathways that lead towards sustainability with a specific focus on ‘Equity within biological planetary limits’. … This use of the term ‘convergence’ harkens from the concept of contraction and convergence (C&C), taking its core principles of Equity and Survival and applying them beyond the frame of greenhouse gas emissions to the wider sustainability agenda". The use of Convergence when contemplating the organisaitons of the food system is helpful as it gives emphasis to both social justice and environmental / ecological aspects of Sustainable Development. Many Alternative food Networks focus on Environmental Sustainability, but very many communicate their key motivators as social justice based. For example the fairtrade movement, though acknowledging of environmental sustainability has a far deeper foundation in fairness, wellbeing etc. Care farms are another example of activities with more weight placed on progress in social justice. This research posits that transitions in the food system should move towards greater environmental sustainability and social justice for overall sustainability to be progressed. This coupled approach is echoed in the now defunct Sustainable Development Comission’s dual aims for a sustainable food system ‘Looking Back, Looking 2Forwards’ (2011):
In the context of measuring success the term convergence appears with 2 related meanings in this research. In both cases, as described by Ian Roderick of the Schumacher Institute, it refers to bringing things together (convergence), such that they don’t come apart (divergence). 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
(1) Convergence is used in the first instance to describe the bringing together both from the top down (large agri corporates) and the bottom up (small scale agri-entrepreneurs) the UK food system, into the missing middle space. In this sense it describes a characteristic of processes, mechanisms and transitions that close gaps and deconstruct dichotomies for sustainable place making. (2) Convergence in the second instance refers to “progress towards equal opportunities for all people, within biophysical planetary boundaries”. “Convergence in sustainability sciences refers to mechanisms and pathways that lead towards sustainability with a specific focus on 'Equity within biological planetary limits'. These pathways and mechanisms explicitly advocate equity and recognise the need for redistribution of the Earth's resources in order for human society to operate enduringly within the Earth's biophysical limits. This use of the term 'convergence' harkens from the concept of contraction and convergence (C&C), taking its core principles of Equity and Survival and applying them beyond the frame of greenhouse gas emissions to the wider sustainability agenda. “– The CONVERGE Project1. This version of convergence issues from the CONVERGE FP7 project. Taking inspiration from Aubrey Meyer’s theory of Equity and Survival, the CONVERGE FP7 project (www.convergeproject.org) developed the concept of Convergence - equity within biophysical planetary limits (Fortnam et al., 2010) to assist in clarifying the fuzzy concept of sustainability and to enable the reconciliation of disparate and at times contradictory EU policies in the areas of social justice, green growth and sustainability. To avoid confusion this is referred to as Convergent Globalisation. Convergent globalisation is used here as a conceptual framework for exploring the sustainability of the food system. It is useful for measuring progress and as a framework for analytics when used- as it is in this paper to derive system conditions of a successful system. To support the participatory systems modeling methodology developed by the CONVERGE project team, principles of convergence were developed by extending on Brundtland and The Natural Step International definitions of Sustainability; (which includes a ‘Daly Rules’ Approach) so as to include more explicitly ideas of social justice, degrowth and to counter Jevons paradox. Principles of Convergent Globalisation Convergent Globalisation for sustainability is the progress towards 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
equal opportunities for all people, within biophysical planetary boundaries. In a converging society, every global citizen has the right to a fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and social resources, to enable him or her to live a fulfilling life. A converging society uses its resources efficiently, recognizing the critical value of services from natural systems and limiting its harmful impacts upon them. It recognizes interdependence amongst human societies and between human societies and nature. A converging society invests positively in human, social and environmental resources; and cares for them, maintains them and restores. (Kristinsdottir 2012) For the purpose of this study, I have adapted these principles of Convergence for use as System Conditions of a Sustainable Food System, providing generic boundaries through which I can explore current sustainability-oriented approaches to the food system: System Conditions of a Sustainable Food System: In a sustainable food system, every global citizen has the right to a fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and social resources, to enable him or her to access food in a fulfilling way. A sustainable food system uses its resources efficiently, recognizing the critical value of services from natural systems and limiting its harmful impacts upon them. It recognizes interdependence amongst human societies and between human societies and nature. A sustainable food system invests positively in human, social and environmental resources; and cares for them, maintains them and restores. (adapted from Kristinsdottir 2012) Finally a version of convergence that this research does not use beyond this description- is already in common use in economics, where it refers to convergence in incomes, dependent on a wealth gradient whereby capital flows from richer countries towards poorer countries (in part via diminishing returns), eventually leading to greater income equality. This is almost the opposite meaning of convergence as used in this paper, focusing on a need for divergence to enable flow of capital. Convergence in this sense depends on a capitalist model of exchange making use of the lower labour costs and barriers to 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
production / service provision in poorer countries. This version of convergence is criticised by Robert Lucas explaining that capital doesn’t seem to flow from rich countries to poorer countries in practice – a critique called the Lucas Paradox.3 Convergent Globalisation in this setting can be considered to be a subset of Sustainable Development referring explicitly to processes and mechanisms; as opposed to static points; that link progress towards greater equity with the transition towards a global society living within planetary limits. Convergence Quadrant Model Tool A useful tool emerging from the Converge Project (Vadovics et al 2013) is the Quadrant Model. Used for showing the direction of transitions and whether they are converging towards equality and resource frugality or diverging towards inequality and profligacy. This Quadrant was used in the CONVERGE project to map the current reality of organisations purporting to work in sustainability, based on their websites and publications - I.e. What they say as opposed to what they do - an unfair analysis perhaps, but deemed a useful one for assisting these to improve how they explain their work and to consider working more with equality and social justice or environment and Figure 2: Converge Quadrant Tool ecology if they were for the time being not coupling these two. This research will use the Quadrant as a means to map the form of networking-up organizations of the missing middle.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Figure 3: The CONVERGE Quadrant tool in practice -‐ Vadovics et al 2013
In the above diagram (figure 3) we can see how the CONVERGE project mapped out the activites of different initiatives using the quadrant tool. This research would seek to map-out the tendencies of a networked-up organization (and its network) towards Convergence, using Vadovics et al’s methodology and adapting it for networkied-up 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
as opposed to singular activities.
Socio-‐Technical Systems Framework In wanting to contribute to a transition towards a sustainable food system, this project is about change making. So a large part of how we measure sustainability is really about how we contemplate sustainable development. How change / development happens, the environment that surrounds change-making and how one might undertake its observation is the concern of Transition Theory. If we want positive (convergent) transitions to take place - and sustainable practices to diffuse throughout society, the missing middle presents the window of opportunity and subject of this research. The Socio-Technical Systems Framework (STSF)(Geels & Schot 2007) offers a means to examine how niche innovations or ways of being transition to becoming the norm (regime) or become even more entrenched and underpin how society functions (Socio-technical landscape). This is called a multi-level framework because of the aoption of niche, regime and landscape dimensions. An easy example to understand how this works is the car, which started out as a niche innovation, became the norm and now roads and infrastructure surrounding cars have become a structural aspect of the function of society. Transition Theory was intended to examine shifts in technology. The term Technology can be confusing when we think about food - we don't think of it as technology, but exactly what we produce, how and what happens to that food; is the very 'technology' to which we will now refer. Nelson & Winter (19821) conceived the idea of technical regimes- the beliefs, and design norms on which advances in technology are founded. For the food system, this could for example refer to the belief that certain tomatoes are healthy, and the design norm to grow tomatoes in heated greenhouses. This might lead to advances in technology focusing on the type and agricultural practices used to grow tomatoes, as opposed to others. Frank Geels and Johan Shot (2007),2 took this idea further - their more modern approaches to transition theory look at transformation as a combination of actions across 3 levels (niche, landscape and regime). “a) the niche-innovation builds up internal momentum… b)changes at the landscape level that create pressure on the regime and stimulate niche innovations, c) destabilisation of the regime creates a window of opportunity for niche-innovations…if the new configuration becomes dominant, it results in a socio-technical regime change” (Flynn & Bailey 2014).3 The way that these 3 levels interact defines the ‘transition 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
pathway’. Geels and Schot recognise 5 transition pathways – 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Transformation Opening up a new domain Technological substitution De-alignment and re-alignment Reconfiguration
Critique of early transition theory suggest that the embeddedness in society of a technology didn't really get considered; whilst concerns such as rapidly made decisions pertaining to design options, and some sort of design culture within an organisation were attributed too great significance (Geels 20054). As Rip and Kemp explain (19985): “a technological regime is the rule-set or grammar embedded in a complex of engineering practices, production process technologies, product characteristics, skills and procedures, ways of handling relevant artefacts and persons, ways of defining problems – all of them embedded in institutions and infrastructures. Regimes are intermediaries between specific innovations as these are conceived, developed and introduced, and overall sociotechnical landscapes.” This is confirmed in a recent study of producer-producer relationships in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France where networks were investigated (Farmer’s markets and box schemes) to find out the nature of their dynamics and ties. Their findings refer to the embeddedness of actors and for example refer in one instance to the the sorts of rules that farmers adhere to in alternative food markets and these are the realisation of a political dimension that long chains cannot reproduce (Chiffoleaue 20096). Using transition theory enables the researcher to have a consistent form for categorisation and possibly for mapping / modelling actions in terms of transition 'phase' giving a form for a time dimension to what might otherwise be a predominantly spatial perspective.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Figure 4: The Multi Level Perspective on System Transitions -‐ Geels & Schott, 2007
Figure 4 is a good way to understand how these transition pathways interact with Niche, Regime and Landscape. For the purpose of studying the Regime Smith et al (2005) suggest it can be considered to have a constellation of interacting elements or aspects with differing powers and that all of these should be examined in its study. Marc Adams of Cardiff University adds to the STSF by suggesting spatiality is an inherent part of landscape and regime and adds the concept of the biophysical to the constellation of elements that make up the regime proposed by Smith et al (Adams 2015). Marc Adams also introduces the concept of assimulative potential of the niche with respect to the region (how readily it can be absorbed or adopted by the region) as an important tool in the examination of transitions. Assimulative potential can be measured by investigating the 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
elements of the niche and their alignment with elements of the regime. Adams recognizes that some niche's cannot be readily taken on by the regime because they have low assimulative potential. This doesn’t mean the niche isn't valuable or won't survive, rather that it is unlikely to scale up to become a norm within the current regime. For example, some argue that the niche of organic food lost the parts of it that were unattractive to the regime (increasing its assimulative potential) then was able to be adopted as a norm, however; the sector shed many of its values in the process and in its transition shifted to be less Alternative and more Conventional. (Smith 2005, Vanloqueren & Baret 2009). The coexistence of Regimes Transition Theory is about how things change which impacts beliefs and behaviors in the technological regime - but this regime of course interacts and is nestled with other regimes - the science regime, policy regime, socio-cultural regime, and the users, markets and distribution networks regimes… Because regimes are also about how people or groups of people in organisations 'do' things, the concept of a regime can be likened to Knorr's aforementioned concept of epistemic cultures (Knorr 1999) and also of Dryzec's exploration of 'discourses' (Dryzek 2013). That is not to say that the existence of concurrent and nested regimes is overlooked in literature Geels (2002), Smith et al (2005) and Genus & Coles (2008), all allude to the coexistence of multiple regimes operating at diverse scales, and of nested hierarchies of regimes. To enable a deeper understanding of the relationships occurring around the missing middle the different regimes, cultures and discourses that surround the food system ought to be drawn out and explored. However in practice it is difficult to unpick regime effects from one another, and from their interplay with transitions and socio-technological structures (Lauridsen & Jorgsen 2010). Figure 5: Multi-‐Level Perspective as a Nested Heirarchy (Genus & Coles 2008, adapted from Geels 2002)
Networking up – Emergent Organisational Forms There is something a bit different about the organisations I see emerging in the missing middle space. They seem to be challenging 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
the normal food system value chain - adding new linkages, shortening distances and subverting the typical route to market / from farm to fork. Could it be that the emerging organisations of the missing middle space are able to hold their own, because, rather than scaling up, they are connecting-up? Rather than growing by being absorbed or adopted into the conventional regime, are these niche innovations joining forces across their value chains and forming an altogether more networked and webby ecosystems of regime of their own - and gaining market share on the conventional food system regime? In this image the black text represents the conventional food system value chain and the blue the mapping onto this of the emergent organisational forms of the missing middle. For example: New Aggregator - Somerset Local Food Direct New Market Places - Bristol Street Food Market Bespoke Aggregators - Happy Fresh / Snackbox Mobile shops - Charmouth Flyer Producer Coops - Peasant's Evolution Cooperative Reusers - Fareshare
Figure 6: The Food Value Chain and Emerging Organisational Forms
In the context of the food system more can be contributed to the academic discourse on Transition Theory. The question of whether the niche is really where innovations come from and where the opportunity 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
space for transition is born (which is criticised by Berkout et al (2004)7) is certainly of critical interest to the question of how transitions towards sustainability occur; and might be promoted across the missing middle space. The network - and niches emerging from collaborative innovation is so far ignored in literature as far as I can see. How then can the concept of transition theory be adapted to be open to transitions involving networks? Probably the nearest attempt to add this type of flexibility to the STSF can be seen in Rotmans and Loorbach 2010 who add further pathways: - Niche shifts to niche-regime (which might cover the idea of a networked-up transition pathway) - Niche-regime shifts to regime (by absorption, or co-option) - Regime - shifts to niche regime (enforced by massive pressures inducing regime collapse, or its substitution by the niche regime for competition reasons). I entertain here the idea that there could be a new transition pathway of 'networking up' from niche until a new subversive regime exists in parallel to its conventional predecessor. I suggest this offers us a new means to consider the sustainability transitions occuring across the missing middle space. This could be covered by adding a sentence to Rotman and loorbach’s pathways which combines their ideas with Genus & Coles (2008) concept of nested Regimes. -Niche-Regime exists concurrently to conventional regime A critique I innately find with the STSF that is significant to how this research considers NetworkingUp transition pathways is the complete neglect of the individuals who’s energy drives the niche’s transitions. I understand that this derives from a rationalist perspective – i.e. that humans act rationally based on influences and that if influences are recognised, then behaviours can be generalised therein (from the regime). However having researched how collaborative work happens (Archer et al. 2009) and seen 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place,
Figure 7: Networking up niche connecting with Cardiff, CF10under 3BA.the alicemarie.archer@gmail.com nested regimes, influence of Landscape
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
from the inside how a variety of business do or don’t progress towards their vision of success, I would suggest this to be a significant aspect for how we think about Networking-up processes – who they connect with, how, why, when, and where this leads. I’ve tried to put the interactions of Landscape, concurrent regimes and networking-up niche’s into a more visual form – see figure 6. The landscape effects in my image permeate the whole system, the region is in parts connecting with the networking-up niche – perhaps through institutions or some niche-aspects that are more assimilated.
Niche Pervasivity To enable this networking-up to be investigated I propose the measure of *Niche Pervasivity* to be added to the STSF toolbox. Niche Pervasivity is a measure of the connectedness of a niche to other likeniche's and organisations across the constellation of elements. Number and quality of connections is proportional to degree of niche pervasion and degree of Niche Pervasivity can tell us about the niche's advancement along the networking-up transition pathway. Niche Pervasivity enables the researcher to measure and visualise networking-up activities and potentially to consider connected niche innovations as new socio-technical shapes - with different shapes offering different roles. This could mean a shift in the socio-technical systems framework's appreciation of how alternative and concurrent 'regions' emerge, where many organisations remain niche but work closely together under various 'shapes'. I wander whether the more pervasive a network of niche's is, the closer this can come to subverting the current regime, and to setting up a new regime of its own? I suspect this can only really happen for niche's where assimulative potential of the niche is allready low - I want to find out if these two measure's are indirectly proportional or connected at all. Where assimilative potential lets us investigate the acceptability of a niche to a regime, niche pervasivity allows us to measure the entrenchment of a niche in the real world by analysing the niche's network. Contellations of elements of the STSF and Assemblage theory Niche Pervasivity could be mapped across the constellation of elements of the regime and landscape. When Puar (Puar, Terrorist Assemblages 2042) was discussing this present-future of emergent transitions it was in the context of gender and and using a foundation of assemblage theory. She posits that the typical way we describe actors and their identity as derived from the intersection of race, class etc (intersectionality) should be supplemented by the consideration of 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
identity categories as ‘events, actions and encounters between bodies’, fitting very much with both Critical Realism approaches discussed later and with the way we might consider the forcings of Regime and Landscape in the STSF. Jane Bennet connects Latour’s Actor Network Theory (Latour 2 20053) and Deleuze and Guattari’s Assemblage Theory (19874) in her own theory of Material Vitalism (Bennet, 20105). If we are mixing ideas of agencement with STSF, we are examining the agency of the constellation of regime and landscape elements as sort-of-stakeholders with their own power. In the context of transition theory, this is of further importance because, as Dutch KSI paper explains - The role of agency in transitions is crucially important since structural change is often not easy to combine with a concise and integral view on how change can be brought about” (Grinn et al 2011)6 – i.e. if leverage points and opportunities for systemic interventions are sought out, then agency of the constellation of elements needs to be understood. Here I have attempted to describe more general food system elements within the framework of assemblage characteristics: Assemblage Characteristic Material
Expressive
Territorialising stabilising and maintaining the current reality of the assemblage (or Morphostatic – see section on Critical Realism) Deterritorialising causing the restructuring of the assemblage (Morphogenetic) Linguistic / Coding -Conversations:
Stakeholder /Agent / node / rhizome Soil, water, trees, sunlight, energy, fuel, food products, farmers, labourers, processors, shops, customers, waste processors, hospitals, canteens, schools, grocers, eateries, commercial kitchens, homes, future generations Places, spaces, habitats, landscapes, colours, sounds, flavours, the farm, the working farmer as an ideal, green and pleasant land, the kitchen table, the peasant, the industrial monster… Food chain, Climate, Policy, Subsidy, Food value chain, Regime
Climate Change, Degeneration of soil, Shift in food fashion, Demand vs Supply, Landscape (transition theory - not geographical)
Food Fashions - magazines, journalists, events, Sustainability and Environment - labelling , Product Marketing - packaging, Agri-technological, Policy making, Neo peasantry, Predjudices, preferences,
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Research Aims
The overall research project has the following aims (adapted from an interdisciplinary approach designed by Dr Maik Adomssent (Adomssent 2013)) On the Analytical level • To interrelated complex fields of problems for networking-up transition pathways across the missing middle space - both perceived and experienced (Actor Mental Models) • To analyse the embeddedness of these problems in society and nature (System Structures) • To examine pertinent influencing factors and processes (Pattern’s and Relationships) • To analyse options for intervening in / restructuring the current food system towards a sustainable system (Leverage Points) • To estimate the economic, social and environmental impacts of different options (Scenarios) On the Normative Level • To begin the process of clarifying the complex fuzzy framing of ‘sustainable food system‘, ‘Networking-up’ and ‘missing middle’ • To clarify the goals of a sustainable food system and of networkingup transitions across the missing middle space. • To reconstruct the processes of societal discourse and to contribute to its advancement On the Operational Level • To examine practical terms and conditions for action • To elaborate and prioritise strategies towards a sustainable food system according to the analysed conditions and their societal implementation and implications • To produce decision support tools and policy relevant guidelines that bring together the findings of this research into a meaningful and useable manner. In approaching the research aims, the following research questions are proposed- around which a methodological approach is designed:
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Research Questions Normative primary research question: ‘how do we move towards a sustainable food system?’ Sub questions: What are Networking-Up Organisations of the Missing Middle? What is Networking-up about? • What methods are appropriate for capturing their complexity? How to measure connections? Spatially? Relationally? What type / forms / qualities of connections are emerging? o How to define / delimit networking-up transitions? o What strategies promote networking-up transitions? • What organisational forms can support networking up? What, if anything, is distinctive about organisations that network-up in this way? What modes of pervasivity exist and do these differ between types of organisation? o What agents are involved? Who is powerful? What is valuable? • What can these organisations tell us about how we can make better connections? What is the sustainability potential of networking-up organisations? o What processes of convergence / divergence exist? o What transitions towards sustainability occur? o How sustainable are these networks? o How do they compare to other (AFN / Conventional) organisations? o What can exploring the networking-up transitions tell us about processes of place, of scale and their influence on sustainability? And for which, were the missing middle be observed as having high sustainability potential the following policy and practice questions arise: o How to measure progress? o What are common / case specific key performance indicators for the transition towards a sustainable food system? o What arguments exist for change-making? o What tools and mechanisms exist for knowledge exchange? Can networking up be found in existing policy arenas? 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Epistemological Ecosystem Transdiciplinary and Systems Science Research; into what are thought of as critical concerns and challenges; needs to offer a lens through which a problem may be seen in all its clarity; a prism through which multiple truths can be inspected and overlaid; and offer some platform on which solutions to “I’ve always felt that it is these challenges may be impossible to engage properly with a place or a constructed in the real world. person without engaging with There is a significant concern that all of the stories of that place acting as individuals, we do not and that person. The possesses the capacity to innovate consequence of the single the changes necessitated of us to story is this: It robs people of tackle the challenges of dignity. It makes our sustainability. As Mark Klein of MIT recognition of our equal puts it - “A lot of sustainability issues humanity difficult. It we have can be traced to the fact emphasizes how we are that too small a number of people different rather than how we are making decisions that affect all are similar”. - Chimamanda of us, based on too narrow a set of Ngozi Adichi (TED conference 1 concerns" (from Archer. A, et al. 2009 ). 20093). Schumacher highlights the danger and reality of this ‘single story’ approach to power by explaining that “our [sustainability] difficulties and dangers are not the result of our failures but our successes” and that ultimately “Western man is far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom”E.F.Schumacher (1973)4. Systems thinker Thomas Homer-Dixon labels this concern the 'ingenuity gap' (Homer-Dixon 20005). In response to the ingenuity gap, many actors within sustainable development: practitioners and researchers, as well as those in governance; are demanding more perspectives and expertise be taken into account and that wider ownership of sustainable development is fostered (de Bruijn and Tukker 20026). This represents a fostering of the wisdom of the many and ensuring that lay knowledge, experience and practice is not discounted, with the risk that our short-term successful delivery of longer-term failures (in terms of sustainability) continues.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Transdisciplinary approaches as they were originally termed, stem from the work (amongst others) of Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget who sought to go beyond the academic, beyond the single-story; and take into account the expertise of diverse academic disciplines, as well as practitioner experience and other stakeholders in the system value-chain (Bruce et al. 2004)7. This multiplicit view takes us away from the idea that science is the only way knowledge is generated (positive triumphalist models of knowledge - Parker (2001)8 and avoids the concurrent loss of local and practical knowledge and innate wisdom. Its appropriate to the investigation of the missing middle space because the food system value chain is composed of many actors with many forms of knowledge, and each with unique configurations of processes, mechanisms, relationships and events that make up their orientations . The emergent organisations of the missing middle space don’t represent fixed disciplines; rather in terms of how knowledge is used, made and considered valid; the actors and organisations of this research are endowed with a myriad of what Cetina Knorr calls epistemic cultures (Knorr 19999) that determine what they ‘know’ as well as what knowledge to them is, suggesting a trans disciplinary approach is useful for tilling the fields of knowledge across the value chain in this research (Adomssent 201310). The way I have approached describing the challenge of transitioning towards a sustainable food system, in particular describing our current reality, in Chapter 1. Context, follows a form of discourse first Coined by the Club of Rome in the 1970s (Meadows et al 1972; Dryzek 2013) called the Survivalist Discourse. This survivalist discourse builds on what are now referred to as seminal works of the environmental movement from the 1960’s: Erlich (Ehrlich, The Population Bomb 1968), Hardin (Hardin 1968), Meadows (Meadows et al. Limits to Growth 1972), Macy (The Silent Spring xxxx) and E.F.Schumacher (Schumacher, Small is Beautiful 1973). These works focused on bringing together the growing scientific evidence that people and societies need to change the way we do things for humankind to flourish in the future. The tone of their writing, mine and that of the supporting academic literature is one of urgency, limits, stocks, boundaries, models, and projections all in the shadow of the grim visions of a desolate future given an ‘if we do nothing’ scenario, and shrouded in frustration at progress made far to slowly given the catastrophic implications of science. The science on which survivalism founds itself can provide foresight and warning of the future impacts of the unprecedented anthropogenic impact on the planet. I recognize my survivalist leanings, however I am aware that survivalism 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
is not the only lens through which to approach our sustainability challenges. For example, the Promethean Response discourse (one of several discourses presented by Dryzek 2013) focuses on human ingenuity and people’s capacity to find technological and process responses to resource scarcity (Dryzek 2013). This allows a more diffuse view of power wherin empowered individuals and teams can innovate solutions together. Though not necessarily reflected by other agents in the food system (supermarkets, food processing corporations, international food institutions), a survivalist perspective is prevalent in academic literature pertaining to sustainable food systems; this has sculpted the way we examine the sustainability of the food system and has a role in underpinning the AFN / Conventional rift in literature and in practice. As a way to think, discuss and explain the challenges of an unsustainable food system from the perspective of its transitions, the survivalist discourse can shift the way we make meaning and knowledge (Hall 2007; Dryzek 2013) and the way we validate a ‘regime’ with implications for power and governance of the food system - because “discourses are important for how power is communicated and contested” (Stuart Hall 2007 pp. 58). I suspect that the survivalist meme has a part in reinforcing the AFN / Conventional dichotomy both in practice and academia. Taking a transition theory perspective therefore needs to take into consideration the academic regime. Going across, between and beyond disciplines requires of the researcher particular transdisciplinarian skills. According to Ausubel’s theory of assimilation, in terms of the researcher’s own knowledge - it is created as it is perceived by the researcher to be meaningful (Novak 200511). The way the researcher then go on to decide how concepts are interconnected, and the detail and shape of her mental model has “deep rooted generalisations or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action” (Senge 199712). She will throughout the research process need to (1) develop an awareness and conceptual understanding of the complexity of problems, (2) take into account the diversity of our existence and the many perspectives that exist therein, (3) interlink both abstract and real-world knowledge and (4) contribute to knowledge and practice inline with what is perceived to be of ‘common good’ (Pohl and Hadorn 2007. pp. 20)13. These 4 fundamentals of Transdisciplinary Research suggest a systematic approach be taken for transdisciplinary research if a nuanced and relevant theory is to be constructed.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Figure 8 : Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider's Web, 2009. Photo: Alessandro Coco © Tomás Saraceno
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Taking a systems science perspective / whole-systems approach is essentially the conceptual basis of transdisciplinary research (Jantsch 1970, 1972;14 Bammer 2005;15 Robinson 2008).16 Originating in Cybernetics (Weiner 196817) the modern application of systems science is wide ranging throughout natural sciences, social sciences and organisational management. A systems science approach applied to sustainability can be defined as the “analysis of complex systems across different domains (society, environment, economy etc) and across scales (local to global) thereby considering cascading effects, inertia, feedback loops and other systemic features related to sustainability issues and sustainability frameworks” (Wiek et al 201118). Going beyond a compartmentalised / reductionist approach to research, systems science tools and frameworks provide the researcher with a means to look at an aspect of a system; a detail; whilst all the time this aspect acts as a handle by which to lift and inspect the wider system context, interconnections and dynamics. I draw connection with (as a curious and no doubt morbid child) gently vibrating a spiderweb, such that the spider emerges from its shady corner. The need in for a full perspective is quite apparent - over history all sorts of unsustainable short-term fixes have been introduced, that worked initially, then lead to new and additional problems. This is known as a ‘fixes that fail’ type of systems architecture (Senge, 199019) and is what taking a systems science approach seeks to avoid in the persuit of transitions towards some long term common good. In this sense, longtermism is an important framing for this research, and the future ideally a sustainable one - is the client. Systems science approaches are important for the framing of how knowledge is acquired, acknowledged and ordered by the researcher.
Critical realism For the researcher to explore the interface between people and the natural world as is necessary when approaching the food system; and in particular to understand the constellations of things that influence actor orientation, mental models and their possible behaviours; this research requires that both the observable- quantitative- elements and the less-tangible qualitative aspects of networking-up transitions be able to coexist in research. Critical realism gained popularity within the study of geography through its application in the critique of empiricism (Bhaskar 1978) as the core of positivist approaches to knowledge making, and idea that 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
causality can be determined purely from spatial variation.20 This is particularly ironic given that this research proposes spatial analysis and causal loop modelling to be a useful tool! However what it does offer to this research, is to enable the researcher to acknowledge the dynamic and changing mechanisms and processes leading to phenomena, and to take into consideration how one’s research itself might inform perspectives and actions. Although this research strays away from the more esoterical irrealist aspects of Critical Realism, it intends to approach a key concept that science is not merely the observation and recording of events, but is about the things that generate those events, whether these be readily empirically observable or more softly perceived and acknowledged. Critical realism combines two concepts – that of transcendental realism with critical naturalism. Transcendental realism looks not so much at events to explain what happened and why, rather at the mechanisms and processes that generate these - what was going on at the time, how this pulled on the system and emerging situation. This makes a great deal of sense when we think about how we understand transition pathways of networking up over time. This suggests that a constant and clearly connected relationship between events is not necessary to suggest causality (Sayer, A. 2000).21 Critical Naturalism suggests that although a transcendental realism approach can be applied to the physical and human worlds, that the human world adds a new layer of complexity, which is for one constantly changing, but that also these human events are influenced by and themselves go on to influence human agency. Again this is very relevant in the way this research aggregates knowledge on the influences and deepening mental models of actors in a transition timeline. The science and scientific knowledge the researcher uses and creates is part of this interaction - as new ideas and understandings become normal they shift the system as they are used and acted on. I consider this paradigm to be important for the pursuit of a sustainable future. I have always envisioned a sustainable system where any complexity is involved to necessarily be something more like a dynamic equilibrium, within it a set of transitioning processes and mechanisms that necessarily are at any one time impermenant, incomplete, and imperfect - and liken this to the ancient Japanese Asthetic / world view / philosophy of Wabi-sabi (侘 寂) centred on the acceptance of transcience and recognition of beauty therein. Put fairly simply, critical realism understands 3 parts to reality: (1) The Empirical, (2) The Actual and (3) the Real. I grew up on the south coast 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
of the UK and spent vast amounts of time looking out from the Chesil over the Atlantic and English Channel in the vague direction of the Americas. It's in this vision of the sea that I want to explore these 3 parts to reality (see Figure 9). Look westwards with me - the empirical refers to that which we experience - the waves on the surface of the ocean, reflections, angles, the seaweed that drapes the surface, a spent jellyfish bobbing landwards. The actual refers to those experiences, plus the goings on around us of which we are less conscious - do we immediately see the ebb and flow of the tides - do we note the change in waveform emanating from a ship now well passed the horizon? The real finally refers to the deeper processes that drive the formation of the tides and waves - the swells rising from the hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico, the deep ocean currents with their variations in temperature, salinity; the distance of moon. These are generative powers, which are for the most part unobserved and unknown to us as we stand wind and salt-swept on the pebbles.
Figure 9 Looking outwards from the Chesil at the end of a south-‐westerly gale. The wind had eased but there was still a swell running producing waves. This was a spring low tide, but there is still very little of the chesil above the waterline. (c) Ed Harland Licensed for reuse under a creative commons license (16/02/2007).
Another characteristic of these 3 parts to reality - empirical, actual and real - is that, given the latencies between the causal forcing of 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
generative powers, by the time we do experience phenomena, we are wildly out of sink or phase with their deeper roots. This really means that, though problem solving can be undertaken at the deep, real level - with consequential outcomes in the shallow empirical, this is for the most part not interchangeable. To understand how and why networking-up functions; requires appreciation of multiple human realities influenced by place, spaces, landscapes, family histories, migrations, climate, weather, political landscape, infrastructure… so many processes and mechanisms exist that influence how the food system might be observed from the empirical. To make the deep, disruptive transitions towards a sustainable future; to contribution to some wider societal paradigm shift (meadows 1991) the researcher needs to understand the processes occurring at the real and actual levels - the tides and deeper currents - and how she can intervene in the food system on these levels to enable the greatest leverage for transition. Though still unusual, this will not be the first time that Critical Realism is used as under-labourer in the context of mixed-methods research. Overall the application of Critical Realism as an under-labourer provides a solid rational for a mixed-methodological approach: Purpose of Mixed Methods (MM) Combination Complementarity
Completeness
Developmental
Expansion
Corroboration confirmation Compensation
Diversity
Description
Implication from Critical Realism
MM’s are used in order to gain complimentary views about the same phenomena or events MM research design is used to ensure a complete picture of the phenomena under study Inferences from type of research are being used for another type of research
Different levels of abstraction of a multi layered world demand different methods Requires meta-theoretical considerations (i.e. angle of approach) This being part of the retroductive approach of CR, inferences need to hypothesize about the causal mechanisms whose recovery will then inspire additional research Quantitative methods can be used to guide qualitative research which (subject to the context) is more capable of uncovering generative mechanisms Epistemic fallacy occurs when trying to validate qualitative results with quantitative methods The weakness of different methods are recognized so alternative methods can be used to compensate Different layers of abstraction of a multi-layered world demand different methods
MMs are being implemented in order to provide explanations or expand the understanding obtained in previous research /
MMs are used in order to confirm the findings from another study The weakness of one method can be compensated by the use of another MMs are used in order to obtain divergent views of the same phenomena
Purpose of mixing methods in Critical Realism – Zachariadis et al (2013)
Like Margaret Archer (2012 i ) and Tony Lawson (1997 ii ) in their approaches to economics, this research positions Critical Realism (CR) as an ‘under-labourer’ through which an appropriate approach can 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
be developed. This means that the application of CR from the first instance of the research can be bypassed, and the key notions of CR can none-the-less be applied. Its important though a predominantly epistemological consideration, to look deeper at how CR can be applied in this research and to unpack a few key CR tools that this research will take into consideration – in particular examining how CR can be used in combination with the socio-technological systems framework.
Figure 10: The Multi Level Perspective of the Socio-‐technological systems framework is up-‐ended to demonstrate its compatibility with the deepening levels of enquirey prescribed by critical realism
Archer’s work in particular provides an important platform by which this research melds critical realism with the Socio-Technological Systems Framework (STSF), as it focuses on the relationship between structure and agency and thus can be mapped across the STSF. Archer focuses on the deepening-of and evolution-of actor mental models as a timedependent flow that shifts in influence throughout the transition story. This focus on the individual is otherwise neglected by the STSF which by tradition approaches system dynamics on the macro-scale. The notion that mental models and consequential actions takes place under the influence of conditions and history that shape the mental model and constrain the array of available opportunities for progress however is 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
entirely complimentary to the multi-level perspective the STSF enshrines. Archer goes further in her approach to the human to highlight reflexivity within people as an important factor in outcomes and events. The main methodological influence from this overlaying of STSF on the CR under-labourer is around Archer’s point that the researcher needs to collect “structural narratives in which the interplay of agency, structure and culture is examined over time” (Mingers et al 2013iii). This provides a strong rational for the proposed interconnection of qualitative historical personal and organizational storytelling and quantitative spatialization and measuring of shifting sociotechnological form in transition by combining a critical realist epistemology with the analytical tools of the socio-technological systems framework. 3 prominent tools from Critical Realism are selected for their applicability to this research: The internal Conversation Archer’s more recent work’s focus on ‘‘every transaction ... is reflexivity is adopted by Dobsen et al social in the broader sense (2013) who whilst looking at the uptake of the term: congealed every market of broadband in Australia address the into idea of ‘internal reflexivity’ and its exchange is a history of interaction with structural conditions. struggle and contestation This fits well with the STSF as these that has produced actors certain imposing conditions can be considered with of Regime and Landscape Level whereas understandings themselves and the world internal conversation and mental model can be Actor specific and a that predispose them to means by which to examine the niche. exchange under a certain Dobsen and team look at Archer’s 4 set of social rules and not modes of reflexivity – communicative, another” autonomous, meta and fractured – and (Krippner, 2001, p. 785). confirm that agency is significant to how agents make decisions and interact with relevant cultural and socio-cultural structures according to Archer’s morphogenetic or morphostatic sequences. This research will apply the concept of the internal conversation / actor reflexivity to the examination of evolving mental models of actors in the networking-up transition pathway. The approach will in many instances be retrospective, as it is applied to connecting-up niche’s / organisations that have already emerged as of interest to this research. The question for actors and agents then becomes: how with your current mental model do you perceive your evolution? – which may entail a curious convolution and a limitation to this research - though a necessary one. 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Morphogenetic Analysis Morpho(shape)-genesis – essentially describes how the dynamic and evolving shape of society is a product of generative influences. Morphogenetic Analysis is an analytical tool for drawing out relationships between structures, agency and events / observable outcomes by approaching the connecting and generative mechanisms. Archer’s approach to morphogenetic analysis starts by looking at time and timings to precipitate-out the layers of social reality. Each layer – stratum – has causal powers that can’t really be reduced to look at the different components of the strata. Temporality is used to connect these parts with the strata, and emergence explains the relationship between the strata and the changing shape of relationships over time. Archer also separates structural and cultural systems. Agents taking place incur structural or cultural emergent properties or interactions. The key point here is that Agency comes to be, and is transformed through- what Archer terms the morphagenetic cycle: Structural cycle – Prior Conditioning – social interaction – structural elaboration Cultural cycle Prior Conditioning – socio-cultural interaction – cultural elaboration Personal cycle Person (prior conditioning) -Agent (transforming the system but also transformed themselves in the process) -Actor (have a role in the system and can shape structure and culture) Morphogenesis represents the cycle running in a changing phase, and morphostasis signifies that the current system is reproduced through the cycle. In response to why people choose to do things one way or another, Archer’s work also assists in the categorisation of relationship possibilities: Agent’s given situation: Coherence / tension • Congruence (discourage change) • Incongruence (encourage change) Situational logics: Systemic Level Compatibilities / incompatibilities • Necessary complimentarily (protect existing state of affairs) • Necessary incompatibility (compromise because decoupling and survival not possible) • Contingent complementarity (opportunism) • Contingent incompatibility (no incentive for compromise – competition & elimination) 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Retroduction Zachariadis et al (2013 iv ) explore critical realism’s layered ontology focusing on the generative forces and underlying mechanisms as opposed to easily perceivable events. To get-at the unobserved, they employ a process of retroduction whereby the researcher postulates and identifies the mechanisms capable of producing events, which allows the research to approach questions of what deep generative mechanisms might be in action. They demonstrate that this approach can enable the interconnection of situated narrative with more statistical or quantitative descriptions, that these can change the way the researcher sees reliability, validity and inference-quality - so as to explore the unobservable deep generative mechanisms and then zoom out to tell a robust story about the meta-inferences.
Figure 11: The Retroductive approach of Critical Realism for Knowledge Creation -‐ Zachariadis et al (2013)
Place Based Approaches The UK food system is through history, culture, tradition… an integral part of people’s place making activities. The spaces of the food system in place cannot exist without people and the identities they bring to geographical places (Massey 200522). The types of lives people lead jobs, homes, communities, access to schools etc depend very much on place as does the availability of foods and cultures of food production which differ widely from place to place. Equally, food spaces and places impact where people in turn choose to live. In terms of those actively engaged in the food system, their experience and work is deeply affected by place. Connecting back to critical realism, there is a strong argument for emplacing this research as notto-do-so would neglect the huge influence of spaces and places on the region and landscape of transition. Sustainable places have as a key concern the way people feed 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
themselves, and the systems in place in society that relate to the activities around the food value chain from field to fork. The exploration of the food system from the perspective of the networking-up in/trans the missing middle and its sustainability potential infers an examination of the flows between people and place. Place provides the interface between people, produce and the socio-technological structures that connect these and is thus a significant locus for this research. In emplacing this research the researcher is again faced with huge diversity. For one, the types of food space throughout the food value chain and the interactions between these occur through complex spatial flows and transfers which we can think of as flows and nodes. Crabtree in the delightfully entitled Journal of Mundane Behaviour refers to the additional consideration of spaces as ‘organisational features’ of daily life (Crabtree 200023) and their influence on routine, movement and the way we ‘zone’ places. In terms of the food system, this can mean spaces like farmers markets, supermarkets, small retail, where people choose to live, and interactions with often multifaceted food spaces. Urry discusses places as a thing to be in some way consumed (Urry 199524) and taking up the concept of glocalisation Light and Smith discuss places as ‘commodities in an international market’ (Light and Smith 199825). The zoning of space and place is thought of by Massey as political and symbolic and Hetherington discusses how these are places and spaces for people to play out their identities (Hetherington 199826). Writing about the space of the farmers market, Emma Dean explains that the more invisible aspects are core: “complexities, links and spatial forms of the production and consumption come together to form such spaces” and that “the underlying relations…are centrally important to its [the farmers market’s] success and sustainability” (Dean 2013). One starts to see how we may indeed need to take into consideration the Empirical, Actual and Real and how these can be indirectly sub-imposed in the application of the Socio-Technical Systems Framework.
Epistemological Ecosystem – Remarks What emerges from this is that this research design is founded on the amalgam of quantitative science with an openness to multiple types of knowledge and means of knowledge creation. The participation of multiple perspectives is to be facilitated, stewarded and fostered both to broaden the knowledge entering this research, as well as to contribute to the democratisation of decision making. It has been necessary to determine which parts of epistemology are useful, and which methodological approaches appropriate a priori 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
I.e. before the research process is experienced. Equally many academic concepts that have not transcended the disciplines are drawn together - for example discourse, regime and epistemic culture, without a robust investigation as to whether these are really transferable terms. Hence many assumptions and rationalisations underpin how an approach is aggregated from these parts in this research design. Jahn 2008 suggests one way to engage with this limitation is through self-reflexivity - making substantive normative premises and interests transparent – as they are here- and reflecting on knowledge boundarys and limits during the research process (Jahn 200827). This is of further importance for ensuring the researcher takes into consideration how her research itself might inform perspectives and actions.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Research Design – Methodological Approach The research design follows an approach adapted from Bosch et al. (2013v). It refect’s Archer’s adaptive cycles in terms of how it treat’s the research journey. Starting from the reflections from the literature review, through the process of a 3-‐phase methodology, the Researcher Identifies Issues, Develops and
refines Maps, Figure 12: 3 phase methodological approach and researcher Identifies Leverage learning cycle. Adapted from Bosch 2013 Points, Quantifies and runs simulations, then is once again in a position to reflect once more. This cycle can be performed several times through the duration of this research around the more linear progress of the methodology. The way that the 3 methodological phases fit with the mixed -‐methodological approaches are shown in the following figure. 1. A process of stakeholder selection precedes the 3 phases, following which in Phase 1 information on mental models is gathered through interviews, 2. the translation of this information into CLD’s and the mapping of networks onto the CONVERGE Quadrant Tool takes place in phase 2. 3. In phase 3 this data, maps and models are spatialised and spatial network analysis is undertaken. The whole approach is in light of the STSF, with tools and concepts introduced from Critical Realism.
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Stakeholder Selection Snowball sampling (Goodman 1961vi) is the first port of call for selecting stakeholders for this research. Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling technique – which means that it does not seek to study a representative subset of the averarching problematized system of this research (the food system). It therefore is not intended to infer from the studies sample any form of generalisation that might be applied to the general food system. This research applies a respondent-driven sampling approach (Heckathorn 1997vii) wherein once a few networked-up organisations (discussed below) are been put forward for the research, their selfreferrals across their network are a key means by which to make estimations as to the social networks connecting what Heckathorn describes as a ‘hidden population’; understand the form of networking-up over time and; the nodes and links based on which this research will collect and analyse data and discuss new knowledge. Thus from the initial stakeholder list a sample will build up – enabling enough of the studied networks to be revealed to garner an understanding of networking-up transitions, and to discuss potential leverage points and systemic interventions appropriate to this group. The stepwise process of snowball sampling for this research is as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Put forward initial stakeholder list (indicative) Approach list and ask for further contacts Request participation of further contacts Ensure a diversity of contacts across the desired study by widening or constraining the participation of stakeholders based on their profile and its mapping across the Emerging Organisational Forms described in Figure x.
The Initial list of Networked-‐Up organisations put forward for this research For each of the new organizational forms put forward in Figure x an organization is suggested in the initial study: Perceived Suggested organisation intervention in the system Blurred producer- The Community Farm
Geographical scope of organisation Chew Valley
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DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
consumer boundary Bespoke Aggregator TBC (e.g. snackbox) New Market Places Tobacco Factory Farmer’s Market -‐ Mobile Shop The Charmouth Flyer Re-User FareShare Bristol New Aggregator Somerset Local Food Direct (Also Fresh Range Bristol – though they work together so one begets the other) Producer Peasant’s evolution cooperative producers cooperative New Unions / Guilds Bristol Guild of Producers
Bristol West Dorset Bristol Somerset, BANES, Bristol, North Dorset, East Devon, South Wiltshire West Dorset and South-East Devon Bristol and surrounds
Geographical Scope of this study A place-based approach is integral to this form of sampling given the initial organisation list. Those initial people put forward will suggest further contacts that exist within the geographical scope of their network. Further this research operates within a geographical scoping and all initial prospects are taken from this geographical area (see figure 10). The need for a place based approach has been explained in the previous section. The need for a finer grained spatial analysis to include connections and relationships between nodes drives this scope down to the level of the region. The following scope is suggested for this research and initial initiatives put forward for the research all fall within the scope area: The border with the M5 is selected as the Western most boundary so as to include significant food hubs on the M5, the M4 in the North and the A35 in the East are selected to open the scoped area to Bristol, Bath and their main infrastructure. This allows major logistical hubs to be considered 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com Figure 13: Geographical Scope of this Research
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
aswell as a diversity of communities in terms of scale and rurality.
Step 2. Agent Mental Models Semi-Structured Interviews are undertaken with those people suggested by stakeholder analysis. The results of these interviews are drawn into both mental-model maps, and causal loop diagrams. The Morphogenetic Cycle is used as a framework and categorization system by which to promote poignant questions that might enable better use of interview information for subsequent parts of the research. The interviews seek to shine light on the human relationships and reflexivity and their role in the evolution of networking-up organisations over the transition timeline (see figure 11). This will assist the researcher in understanding landscape and region effects on the networking-up transition pathway in particular to consider the actual the real and the empirical. The researcher will examine the interviews from the perspective of historic morphogenetic cycles of agent mental models, and will draw on Archer’s categorization of interactions. Figure 14 Morphagenetic Analysis of networking-‐up
Interview form is adapted from transition pathway Raduescu 2008 viii . Interviews seek to identify the internal relationships and stories within and between people, niche, regime and landscape. Initial questions look at how the system works, and their place within it, barriers to success, system drivers and possible solutions (from the stakeholder perspective). The next level of questions seek to get at the realm of the ‘necessary’ in terms of transcendental argument (Archer 2005) thus can be worded: o What ideas / values need to be the case for your work to happen? 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
o What needs structurally to be going on / in place for your organization to be functioning as it is? Further the interviews look for causal relationships between the networking-up organisations. Essentially this part of the interview seeks to: -‐ Distil causal relationships between actors -‐ Identify how interactions evolve the shape of socio-technological structures through relations. Explore congruence / incongruence in structural vs human power. And can be approached with questions of – why are you working with x or y, how did that relationship develop? I question at this stage if networking with a less sustainable partner though reducing the ‘feel’ of the network might actually pull that agent forwards in their progress. This can be examined at interview.
System Structures – Causal Loop Diagrams and Converge Quadrant Tool The outputs of interviews with stakeholders are drawn up into Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD). As a means to elucidate causal relationships, structures and flows. It is important for the researcher to be reflexive in approaching the promotion of knowledge in this research. How interview information is translated into conceptual maps that categorise and nest conceived realities within hierarchies of belief - will have a huge impact on how the overall effect of humans is perceived to have had a role in the changing form of networking up organisations over time. Moreover, a process of retroduction is employed by the researcher in order to seek out the unobservable deeper Figure 15: CLD focussing on the Icelandic Food System generative forcings on drawn up as part of the CONVERGE project in a group modelling excersize the system questioning: – “What might be happening that could, in some way, provide an adequate explanation?” (Danemark 2005ix) and these hypotheses are also positioned in the CLD. 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
This research will use Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD) as a means to record the relationships emerging from interviews, overlain with the retroductions, and framed by the constructs of region, landscape, niche, and the empirical, actual and real. The constellation of elements are also introduced along with constructs on assemblage. CLD offer a way to visualise how a system is perceived, and to describe cause and effect relationships between parts of that system. CLD can also extend this to describe causality in more detail and add a time dimension to the visualisation - showing ideas around how the evolution of a system over time might occur. The use of Causal Loop Diagraming in combination with Interviewing enables the researcher to take a place-based approach. This bi-modal method involves stakeholders to share their perception of the system and causality therein; and from which the researcher is able to play with scenarios pertaining to the research questions. CLD has a further application here - it can be a challenge to find common ground amongst stakeholders if they disagree on an issue - holding different perspectives. CLD can provide the researcher with a language through which different perspectives can be expressed and recognised. CLD give the researcher • Systems thinking reflexes for their system • An perspective on how actor assumptions and mental models have a role in networking-up • Qualitative insight into the working of the system and of the potential consequences of decisions • Recognition of archetypes of dysfunctional systems in everyday practice. (Adapted from the Systems Dynamics Society, and Haraldsson 20041) The drawing up of CLD has 2 key functions in the research: 1. Knowledge Brokering • Take notes, group ideas, summarise what comes out in interview • Map the network’s knowledge of transition • Preserve knowledge of the food system particularly how it has been in the past • Communicate complexity and non-linearity • Enable the researcher to see diverse perspectives and to - in the next phase - draw out a group / shared perspective of how the networked-up niche / organisation functions, what success means, 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
where challenges lie… 2. Building a Qualitative Foundation • To provide an outline model for quantitative systems dynamics modelling and analysis • To expose faults, gaps, and contradictions in the food system • To highlight successful or positive aspects of the food system that move it towards greater sustainability
Procedure: Causal loop diagrams are made up of variables (called nodes) and relationships or connections (called edges). As the researcher draws CLDs she draws out the things that were discussed at interview as variables and then the links and relationships that surround them - why, who, how. She then marks out these relationships as with or positive (+) or against / negative (-). This refers to how one variable’s relationship with another may be with it (increase one, increase the other - e.g. More soil fertility = more crop yield) or against it (increase one decrease the other - e.g. More pollution = less crop yield).
Figure 16: Example of application of CLD – Population, births and deaths
These linear relationships are then looped - to show what happens before they come full circle - In a simple loop this may involve only two variables: Money in births = more people = more births = more people = more births - That is what we call a reinforcing loop. Interventions that mitigate or stop exponential population growth thus balance or break that loop - and are called Balancing loops. Further, agent’s; based on their mental models are plotted using the CONVERGE Quadrant tool. Agents in the same networked-up system are plotted on the same tool to demonstrate the progress of the network in its transition towards sustainability. The evolving weighting of the network in one quadrant or another can be viewed over time as a qualitative answer to the question, does the networked-up transition pathway lead to greater sustainability 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Patterns and Relationships Spatial Network Analysis This research will apply Spatial Network Analysis as a means of mapping the flows and networks between variables - in this case focus is on mapping the evolving interconnection of networking up organisations over time. This means that various ‘things’ are relevant: people, groups, organisations, products, logistics, infrastructure and power. Spatial network analysis similarly to CLD takes the spatial network to be a graph wherein geometric objects - nodes - are connected by spatial elements (edges) to which a metric is attributed. Spatial network analysis is used to investigate the networking-up transitions of the missing middle by mapping layers of morphgenetic cycles occurring over time during a transition. The order in which they occur, with what type of actors, by how much, and when are all investigated. This will enable the researcher to answer the spatially relevant and network relevant research questions whilst allowing her also to visualise: -Powerful positions in these networks, brokers, bottlenecks -Groupings and hierarchies -An idea of who-knows-who and what power can be attributed to this -Ecosystems of Organisations and Organisational boundaries in space and place -Understand both formal and informal networks as well as unconscious aggregations This stage of the research will be undertaken using information from the snowballed stakeholders. The interconnection of stakeholders in itself provides the spatial framing, where relationships and stories enable the relational framing. The difference between systems dynamics analysis and spatial network analysis is more that they are separate dimensions of the same thing and can be combined as dimensions through programmes such as matlab as raw data, or as tiles of a map - here a combined approach is desired. Urbani and Delhom discuss the advantages of combining multi-agent systems (MAS) (a modelling system based on systems dynamics) to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and how this can provide a useful tool for decision support: -‐ -‐
Enables decision making to consider protagonists various perspectives (heterogeneity) Improves the reliability of decision support by allowing validation of
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
dynamic models by comparing simulation data with field data. The way implications of decisions are perceived changes when viewed in ‘place’. More information can be collected about problems. (Adapted from Urbani and Delhom 2008) -‐
Spatial analysis is important here for examining the quite literal geographic shape of networking up transitions and their evolution over time. The way this shape is manipulated to show influence of power and agency or to show rate of flows will also be possible by combining spatial analysis with both systems dynamics analysis and more qualitative measures. Quantification of scenarios for systems dynamics modeling is possible when working closely with organisations with a lot of flow information available to them so as to look at the potential impacts (good and bad) of proposed interventions. Systems dynamics is an approach that enables the researcher to map out the behaviour of a non-linear system (such as the food system) over time, by exploring the stocks, flows and feedbacks in a system including latencies. In this research systems dynamics depends on the production of Causal Loop Diagrams of system components. This type of modelling enables the researcher to deal with some of the deficiencies recognised in modelling and indicator development. For example neglected interlinkages and cause-effect relationships between indicators / policy areas and the static nature of concerns lacking a time axis and interactivity in the time dimension (Koca et., al 2012)1. This reflects on the thinking of critical realism and on the desire to recognize landscape and regime effects on niche in the STSF. So as to understand the complex interactions between niche, region and landscape, and to attempt to gather knowledge on the empirical, the real and the actual, it is essential to understand relationships and flows between individual parts, places and spaces of networking up organisations. Taking interesting sections of causal loop diagrams a dynamic model will be built using some form of systems dynamics software (STELLA, VENSIM, POWERSIM etc though attention needs to be paid to interoperability with GIS software). Firstly the variables that feature in the causal loop diagrams are represented by stocks, flows or converters and are positioned as they were drawn up in the CLDs to remain faithful to the initial model building as this represents the researcher’s conceptual understanding of an organisation of knowledge. Following this; the model needs to have its initial conditions quantified. This involves chasing down data pertaining to the stocks flows and converters via both Data mining - finding out and collecting 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
what data is available from the networking-up organisations that can contribute primary data. To map networking up as per the CLD’s on the grand scale would be more time consuming and labour intensive than this research can permit. The research questions will be answered by focusing predominantly on mixing secondary data with primary data from the case studies to draw quantitative snapshots of the food system from the perspective of emergent missing middle organisations, and interesting bits of CLD from the group model building workshops. In this research computer software will be used to draw up, quantify and run systems dynamics simulations of real-world situations. Though these models can be used to demonstrate ‘how it works’; typically these simulations are run as scenarios - what if - so as to test how a decision (or new policy) will affect a situation and inspect any knockon benefits or repercussions in the systems in which it sits over time. In that respect, two types of scenarios will be modelled in this research Strategic - what will be the possible impact of a decision / activity? And Transforming - how can a target be reached (a sustainable future). In transforming the CLD into dynamic models of certain processes and aspects of the networking-up transitions, I hope to be able to: Demonstrate how networking-up transitions of the missing middle operate - and the flows that pass through them Find emerging Trends Find potential future issues Try out interventions via sandbox Build an alternative vision of the future testing how networking-up the missing middle could counteract dominant unsustainable trends. Validity A model’s validity is based on how accurately it represents the real system and how appropriate is the model for decision making - namely is it sound. (Venix 1996, Sterman 2000). Validation is much debated within the Critical Realism Community as touched on earlier. In the case of this research, the model’s world view is already limited by the ability of the stakeholders multiple stories to cast light on the real. One form of validation involves using the model to replicate a reference or calibrating behaviour. Others validate a place-based model by using it with the data set of another place. Ultimately models are simplified representations of what in reality is highly complex. Valiation of a model doesn’t suggest its more perfect, rather it can be used to garden confidence in the model as a tool. 19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
Research Timeline Timing May June-July June - September August - December
Task Phase Stakeholder Analysis – 0 Selection Level 1. Interviews 1 – Actor Mental Models Phase 2 – System Structures Phase 3 – Patterns and Relationships
19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com
DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
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DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
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DRAFT Research Design – Tilling the fields of Knowledge. Alice-Marie Archer
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19/05/2015. Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, 33 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BA. alicemarie.archer@gmail.com