Doctoral Dissertation Research: Knowledge Networks and Development Information Translation across Scales

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

This research seeks to understand how people respond to environmental change and why they respond as they do. The challenge of translating ideas from one context to another is at the heart of any development intervention. Understanding how knowledge moves between different cultural contexts and levels of governance, and how it is mobilized to influence particular choices and outcomes, is crucial to devising and implementing effective solutions to socio-environmental problems. Researchers are becoming increasingly aware that knowledge, decision-making, and action are influenced by relations beyond just those between individual human actors. Meteorological events, environmental characteristics, technologies and infrastructures, graphic representations, and other factors also affect how knowledge is shared, interpreted, and applied. This complicated nexus of relationships, which acts at multiple and interacting scales from local and regional to national and international, makes it difficult to predict the effects of particular interventions, a challenging problem for both policy makers and for local people who are trying to cope with a changing world. The research funded by this award will investigate whether general predictive principles can be discerned by looking more closely at the interaction of these factors and scales in the context of a specific environmental adaptation project. The research will be conducted by University of Georgia doctoral student, Jacob Weger, under the supervision of Dr. J. Peter Brosius. Weger will focus data collection on areas included in the Mekong Delta Plan, a Dutch-Vietnamese initiative outlining a 100-year plan for sustainable development. Few regions of the world are as threatened by climate change as the Mekong Delta where rising sea levels already are transforming the area into a predominantly brackish environment. Looking at how a comprehensive plan actually works in this challenging environment provides a unique research opportunity. Weger will conduct ethnographic research at sites spanning multiple levels of governance: the Netherlands, Vietnam, and a coastal province of the Mekong Delta. He will collect data using a suite of methods: in-depth interviews, document analysis, participant observation of meetings, workshops, and farming practices, and social network analysis. These data will be used to construct generalized models of the networks linking levels of governance, as well as those that influence farmer decisions.The goal is to understand how knowledge moves and is interpreted across these levels as it influences local decision-making. Findings from this research will contribute to understanding how knowledge networks, translation politics, and other material conditions and constraints shape response to development interventions. Results will be shared with participants at all levels, including local communities, so that they, too, may contribute effectively to development planning and policy.