Book Review
Social learning in environmental management: Towards a sustainable future.
M Keen, V Brown & R Dyball (eds)
ISBN: 1-844071-83-9 2005 xviii+270 pages London: Earthscan
Chris Cocklin
Professor, Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, VIC
Having its origins in the shared endeavour of a collaborative research project, this edited book on social learning in environmental management is better integrated, more coherent and stylistically more homogeneous than most such compilations.
One of its basic premises is that the challenges that we face in environmental management require collective social action, or what the editors refer to as the ‘social learning approach'. In their introduction, they suggest that this approach has three agendas - ‘to create learning partnerships, learning platforms, and learning ethics that support collective action'. The framework they offer for the approach has five strands: reflection and reflexivity; systems orientation and systems thinking; integration and synthesis; negotiation and collaboration; and participation and engagement.
The book has five main sections. The first, consisting of three chapters, seeks to set out the broad conceptual framework for the social learning approach. In addition to the editors' introduction, this section contains two chapters on the roles of language, dialogue and experience in framing understandings of the environment and a chapter on complex systems.
The second section presents a set of case studies of learning partnerships with communities. In concert with the rest of the book, these case studies are primarily Australian. They include, inter alia, the management of water pollution in the Swan-Canning catchment, sustainable environmental management involving the Yolngu in the Northern Territory, and community involvement in the management of feral goats in southern Queensland. Non-Australian cases that are drawn upon include sustainable development in an area of Scotland and marine area management in Fiji.
The third section of the book is on learning partnerships with government. The first of its three chapters frames communities as ‘islands and beaches' (‘islands of decision making in the larger sea of government and civil society') and draws on the Cool Communities Program to illustrate the interactions between government and community. The section's other two chapters address the local government level, one focusing on the deployment of the precautionary principle, the other on ‘felt knowing', or, in other words, on being reflexive about self-knowledge.
The fourth section is sub-titled ‘Personal and Professional Learning'. The first of its three chapters argues for an ethics of the environment in social engagement, the second deals with science communication, and the third, written by the editors and two others, is a reflexive account of group learning.
In the conclusion, the editors make a substantive ef fort at linking the individual chapters to the key themes of the book and the main dimensions of the social learning approach. They map the individual chapters to a process model of social learning (diagnosis - design - doing - development) and to the five core elements of the social learning approach (reflection, systems orientation, integration, negotiation, participation). This concerted effort at linking the constituent essays together within their social learning framework contributes usefully to the aforementioned cohesion of the book.
In addition to its cohesiveness, the book has several other positive features. Each chapter offers some engagement with underlying theory, and the case studies featured in almost every chapter are in general effectively woven into the discussion. Brief bullet-point summaries at the beginning of each chapter assist in orienting the reader and the book is well illustrated. The chapters are typically well referenced, though a consolidated list would have been preferable to having lists at the end of each chapter.
It is primarily a book aimed at practitioners and senior-level university classes. Those looking for a fuller engagement with the theoretical underpinnings of the social learning approach are likely to find the book limited. On the question, left to one side by the book, of how social learning and community engagement more generally fit within the wider context of decisions that affect the environment, some engagement with contemporary themes in environmental governance would have been useful. Overall, though, the book will establish a position as a useful contribution to the literature on social engagement in environmental management and decision-making.
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