The Power Of Narrative In Environmental Networks

For as long has humans have lived in communities, storytelling has bound people to each other and to their environments. In recent times, scholars have noted how social networks arise around issues of resource and ecological management. This book argues that stories, or narratives, play a key role in these networks - that environmental communities 'narrate themselves into existence'. The book proposes the notion of the narrative-network, and introduces innovative tools to analyse the plots, characters, and events that inform environmental action.

Theory and case studies demonstrate the analytic potential of mutually constitutive “narrative networks” in environmental governance. For as long has humans have lived in communities, storytelling has bound people to each other and to their environments. In recent times, scholars have noted how social networks arise around issues of resource and ecological management. In this book, Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram argue that stories, or narratives, play a key role in these networks—that environmental communities “narrate themselves into existence.” The authors propose the notion of the narrative-network, and introduce innovative tools to analyze the plots, characters, and events that inform environmental action. Their analysis sheds light on how environmental networks can emerge in unlikely contexts and sustain themselves against great odds. The authors present three case studies that demonstrate the power of narrative and narratology in the analysis of environmental networks: a conservation network in the Sonoran Desert, which achieved some success despite U.S.-Mexico border issues; a narrative that bridged differences between community and scientists in the Turtle Islands; and networks of researchers and farmers who collaborated to develop and sustain alternative agriculture practice in the face of government inaction. These cases demonstrate that by paying attention to language and storytelling, we can improve our understanding of environmental behavior and even change it in positive ways.

Theory and case studies demonstrate the analytic potential of mutually constitutive “narrative networks” in environmental governance.

Introduction -- Ideology as narrative -- When skepticism became public -- Skeptics without borders -- Unpacking the genetic meta-narrative -- The social construction of climate science -- Ideological narratives and beyond in a post-truth world.

This book is the product of the 2nd World Conference on Environmental History, held in Guimarães, Portugal, in 2014. It gathers works by authors from the five continents, addressing concerns raised by past events so as to provide information to help manage the present and the future. It reveals how our cultural background and examples of past territorial intervention can help to combat political and cultural limitations through the common language of environmental benefits without disguising harmful past human interventions. Considering that political ideologies such as socialism and capitalism, as well as religion, fail to offer global paradigms for common ground, an environmentally positive discourse instead of an ecological determinism might serve as an umbrella common language to overcome blocking factors, real or invented, and avoid repeating ecological loss. Therefore, agency, environmental speech and historical research are urgently needed in order to sustain environmental paradigms and overcome political, cultural an economic interests in the public arena. This book intertwines reflections on our bonds with landscapes, processes of natural and scientific transfer across the globe, the changing of ecosystems, the way in which scientific knowledge has historically both accelerated destruction and allowed a better distribution of vital resources or as it, in today’s world, can offer alternatives that avoid harming those same vital natural resources: water, soil and air. In addition, it shows the relevance of cultural factors both in the taming of nature in favor of human comfort and in the role of the environment matters in the forging of cultural identities, which cannot be detached from technical intervention in the world. In short, the book firstly studies the past, approaching it as a data set of how the environment has shaped culture, secondly seeks to understand the present, and thirdly assesses future perspectives: what to keep, what to change, and what to dream anew, considering that conventional solutions have not sufficed to protect life on our planet.

This Handbook covers the accounts, by practitioners and observers, of the ways in which policy is formed around problems, how these problems are recognized and understood, and how diverse participants come to be involved in addressing them. H.K. Colebatch and Robert Hoppe draw together a range of original contributions from experts in the field to illuminate the ways in which policies are formed and how they shape the process of governing.

This book draws on examples from cannabis policy discourse and elsewhere to illustrate how individuals come to subscribe to a particular policy narrative; how policy narratives evolve; how narratives are employed in public policy discourse to compete with other narratives; and how, on implementation, the winning narrative is performed and subsequently institutionalized. Further, it explores how uncertainty and ambiguity are constants in public policy discourse, and how different factions and groups pursue different goals and aspirations. In the current climate of political reality, disputable facts and contestable goals, this book shows how different coalitions and ideologies use narratives to compete for policy dominance.

"In 1903, a representative from the Salvation Army's headquarters in London traveled to Canada to explore the possibility of relocating Britain's poor overseas. Over the next three decades, a quarter of a million people were shipped to destinations in Canada, Australia, and Africa. More than a hundred thousand of those deported were children: abandoned, orphaned, and otherwise separated from their natural parents. Dozens of religious organizations took part in the effort: the Catholic Emigration Association, Church of England Society for Empire Settlement, Church of Scotland, Inter-Church Immigration Committee, Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Society of Friends, St. Vincent de Paul, and the United Church of Canada, among others. The practice resumed on a smaller scale after World War II and continued until 1970. The agencies involved described their activities in the language of salvation, moral uplift, and service to God. "Carrying off the children of distress to the lands beyond the sea," one of the organizers wrote, was a service "to religion, humanity and civilization.""--