Vinculación entre las variables independientes y la dependiente

The human ecology framework developed by Dyball and Newell (2015) offers a tool for identifying discourses in specific contexts and scales. In Chapter 3, I expand on the value of human ecology as a framework that enables the systems analysis of different, and often conflicting, perspectives on specific sustainability challenges. While human ecology has a strong history of blending critical social enquiry with home economics, anthropology, and pedagogy (Dyball, 2017) it has been limited by the lack of coherent methodological guides on ‘how’ to undertake human ecological analysis. Multiple fields have advanced human ecological enquiry, and over the last decade studies into food systems have taken human ecological approaches (Dyball, 2015; Porter et al., 2014).

Human ecology has a complex history of fluctuating between being a discipline in itself, or being a methodological approach for sustainability research, teaching, and practice. The histories and diversities of human ecology are coherently documented by authors from the United States of America, Australia, Europe, and Southeast Asia (Borden, 2014; Borden, 2017; Rambo, 1983; Rambo and Sajise, 1984; Stokols, 2018). Human ecology is thought to be taught and researched at over 200 universities world-wide, and thus comes with its nuances and often disciplinary

backgrounds5. As research approaches for sustainability expand towards the fields of co-creating knowledge and generating new knowledge for complex problems (König, 2018; Miller and Wyborn, 2018), human ecology is placed to advance knowledge and interventions through bringing critical enquiry into questioning how systems operate and the outcomes these systems lead to.

In Table 2, I summarise the institutions and major scholarly contributions from diverse framings of human ecology that have influenced my theoretical approach. Throughout my doctoral candidature, I was exposed to the institutions in Table 2 through conferences or literature. The scholarly output from these institutions influenced how I conceptualise human ecology as a global methodology for understand systems behaviour. While I concentrate throughout the thesis on empirically testing and advancing a system-based human ecology framework as per Dyball and Newell (2015), the different institutions below provided conceptual grounding on human ecology, food systems research, and relevant social science research methods.

Table 2: Human ecology institutions relevant to my methodological approach Institution Key elements of their human ecology

approach Example publications

The Australian National University, Australia

Rooted in the urban ecology studies of Stephen Boyden in the 1980s, and advanced through a strong pedagogical and research program. Human ecology conceptualised as a methodology, enabling students and researchers to advance studies into human-

environment relations in a number of different fields.

Boyden (1992); Boyden (2001); Boyden (2004); Boyden (2016), Dyball (2010), van Kerkhoff (2014), Brown et al. (2010)

College of the Atlantic, United States of America

Largely pedagogical, enabling students to develop critical enquiry into the role of society within environmental limits.

Borden (2014); Borden (2017)

University of California, Irvine, United States of America

Social ecology is the technical term they used, yet Stokols (2018) draws multiple similarities between human ecology and social ecology. The focus here is on multi-scale interactions between human and environmental systems.

Stokols (2018)

University of the Philippines, Los Baños, the Philippines

A strong pedagogical program, with the largest number of graduates in

Southeast Asia. The research has focused on community development and nutrition, with a strong home economics background.

Rambo (1983); Rambo and Sajise (1984); Sajise et al.

(1985)

University of

Gothenburg, Sweden Pedagogical and research focused, with particular attention to transdisciplinary methods and the study of urban-rural linkages in food systems.

Olsson et al. (2016); Olsson (2018); Polk (2015); Westberg and Polk (2016), Polk and Bruckmeier (2005) Arizona State

University, United States of America

Pedagogical and research output, with a focus on transdisciplinary methodology development

Lang et al. (2017); Wiek and Iwaniec (2014); Wiek and Lang (2016); Wiek et al. (2012)

5 The Society for Human Ecology has a general database of universities involved in teaching and researching human ecology. See: https://societyforhumanecology.org/human-ecology-programs-and-institutions/

Leuphana University,

Germany While the school aligns with socio-ecological research, the transdisciplinary theory research output draws heavily from human ecological foundations, notably Meadows’ leverage points concepts.

Abson et al. (2017); Caniglia et al. (2017); Lang et al. (2012); Lang et al. (2017); Leventon et al. (2016); Velten et al. (2015)

Human ecology, to my personal scholarly approach, is a foundational heuristic tool to understanding human thinking and practice in the context of environmental change. I developed this methodological foundation through my undergraduate training in an innovative Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (Sustainability), and a subsequent Master of Environment (Research) at the Australian National University. In both degrees, I was exposed to the thinking and practice of human ecological thinking as defined by scholars from the university such as Brown et al. (2010), Van Kerkhoff (van Kerkhoff, 2014; van Kerkhoff and Lebel, 2006), Wyborn (2015), Carpenter (2003), Dyball (2010), Dixon (1999). Beyond their scholarship, I developed an understanding of how soft systems methodologies were useful for critiquing sustainability problems, based on the work of major systems thinkers (Checkland and Scholes, 1999; Midgley, 2000; Ulrich and Reynolds, 2010). These foundations enabled me to approach my research and professional careers with a set of methodological tools for understanding the ethical and environmental concerns within sustainability problems. Building from these foundations, I sought in this thesis to explore how a particular systems-based framework from the field of human ecology, the one developed by Dyball and Newell (2015), could be applied and integrated with social science methods and literature.

Drawing from systems dynamics concepts, Dyball and Newell (2015) proposed a framework (Figure 3), building from Meadows (2008) transferable across scales and contexts that focuses on four major sustainability variables: ecosystems, institutions, human wellbeing, and human belief systems. The framework deliberately constrains itself to the consideration of a limited number of key interacting variables, introduced within the context of food systems literature in Chapter 3. The four general human ecology framework variables are:

• State of discourses: This refers to the collective ideas in individuals or groups that influence action. Discourses may not be shared equally (Dryzek, 2007), but the framework draws attention to those that are dominant and most responsible for a system’s behaviour. At the same time, the framework can identify alternate discourses that are currently marginalised or oppressed but which, if empowered, could set different goals for the system.

• State of institutions: This represents the dominant social institutions that the community has established to govern their collective behaviour. These are the formal and informal rules and institutions that facilitate a community’s actions. Formal institutional rules manifest as policy instruments, such as taxes, regulations, and education programs. Informal institutional rules are those tacit regulations that influence what a community judges to be appropriate conduct in the circumstances (Fischer et al., 2012).

• State of ecosystem: This includes both the natural environment and anthropogenically constructed artefacts, such as agricultural landscapes, buildings, roads, and vehicles. • State of human wellbeing: This captures all physical and psychosocial aspects of what it

means to live well. This includes indicators of good health, such as adequate nutrition. The human ecology framework draws attention to core variables that may be common between individuals or groups with competing belief systems and discourses. The visual representation of the framework and associated systemic design is presented in Figure 2 as the human ecology Cultural Adaptation Template (Dyball and Newell, 2015). The framework variables interact with each other through processes that feedback to constrain each variable’s behaviour, the interactions represented in the framework by arrows. Each interaction or feedback process can have amplifying (+ sign) or balancing (- sign) impacts on other variables. Links 1, 3, and 5 represent individual and collective activity that function to change the quantity or extent of the variables to which they point. Links 2, 4, and 6 are observation processes whereby the individual or community receives signals informing them about the change in the quantity or extent of affected variables. This may create learning and adaptive change in the dominant discourse, which then would feed back to manifest as new collective action and drivers on the affected variables.

While many systems frameworks often lead to highly complex maps trying to capture multiple variables and scales at the same time, the explicit purpose of human ecology as used in this thesis is to embrace complexity while using diagrams to organise how a particular problem, in my case food and nutrition security, is understood by different food system actors in Southeast Asia and the Philippines. The use of such visual processes and tools enable different stakeholders and participants in research processes to work towards building a shared language and understanding of problems (Newell and Siri, 2016). As a framework designed to enable transdisciplinary enquiry, human ecology offers a chance to practically explore understandings of a problem among people who are intending to collaborate on common issues, but who come from diverse cultural or sectorial backgrounds (Brown et al., 2010). I tested this viability of the framework as a tool for identifying food and nutrition security in a collaborative setting (Chapter 5), and within the realm of applied qualitative field work with smallholder farmers (Chapters 6 and 7).

Figure 2: The human ecology framework, adapted from Dyball and Newell (2015). The numbered arrows are explained below.

Within the framework, a series of feedback processes emerge. These can be positive or negative depending on how the framework is applied to literature (as is done in Chapter 3 and 4), or to empirical qualitative data (as is done in Chapter 5, 6, and 7). The summary explanation of the links is as follows:

1. The influence that a dominant discourse has on generating formal and informal decisions amongst individuals or institutions. This includes planning and goal setting resulting in the design and implementation of policies to promote the dominant discourses in society. 2. As formal and informal institutions lead people to behave in particular ways, they will

either reinforce or change the dominant discourse. Dominant discourses may change or resist change, as other institutions might reinforce it. If they were changed, they would influence the formation of new institutions to reflect the new discourse.

3. This link shows the implications of institutional decisions on an individual or a community’s physical and psychological wellbeing.

4. As communities and individuals change based on institutional activities, dominant discourses may shift, eventually creating new institutional interventions. As with Link 2, these observations may challenge or reinforce core values, depending on circumstances. 5. This includes collective activities promoted or enabled by dominant social institutions that

directly affect the environment.

6. As ecosystems change based on formal and informal institutional activities, new discourses may emerge or dominant discourses perpetuated.

State of Human Wellbeing State of Discourses State of Institutions State of Ecosystem 7 3 5 6 1 2 4

7. Ecosystems are affected by policies and human behaviour, and as ecosystems change they directly affect human health and wellbeing.

I use the framework conceptually to compare and contrast food discourses (Chapter 3), and to explore the historical and political nature of food systems in the Philippines (Chapter 4). In Chapter 5, I use the framework to analyse various systems diagrams produced by research and policy experts to identify their discourses that inform their approach to improving food and nutrition security. Chapters 6 and 7 present the application of the framework to semi-structured interview data collected from smallholder farmers in Leyte, the Philippines, explained below. The resulting diagrams from applying the framework act as heuristic devices to simply and clearly reveal differences in how the situation is understood and to ‘see where each other is coming from’. These visual models provide a crucial first step for advancing research and policy that seeks to be co-productive and focused on ongoing knowledge exchange between stakeholders. The diagrams emerging from stakeholders or data analysis provide a ‘snapshot in time’, capturing perceptions of the state of the system at a given moment. However, the system is dynamic and interacts and adapts across time, and so it is the patterns or trajectory of change that is important. For example, some farms might be experiencing highly productive seasons, but sudden shocks, such as severe flooding, may affect the behaviour of the system. As such, the visual outputs are not ‘right or wrong’, but rather they show how a particular situation is framed, providing a platform for critically examining how and why such framing exists.