Metaphors that inspire 'researching with people': UK farming, countrysides and diverse stakeholder contexts

An awareness of metaphors offers exciting possibilities for research. Metaphors can be seen as central to our understandings and as a way to be able to appreciate different understandings. In contexts characterised by many actors and different activities, such as in agriculture, metaphors provide a way of dealing with this diversity. Metaphors also enhance attempts to be self-reflective and responsible in research. Researching with people explicitly recognises the roles assumed by the researcher as well as co-researchers. Researching with people removes a divide between doing and using research, and focuses on how to create a space where different understandings can emerge. The context for this research is how future counrrysides in the UK can come about. Farming, environmental and social issues are all included in this context, although farming is taken as a base. The main 'co-researchers' were several farming families and members of The Farming and Wildlife Advisoy Group (WAG). In the thesis, a framework is developed for recognising, bringing forth and exploring metaphors. Ways of using metaphors explicitly in research are developed by considering how metaphors provide: a way to understand our understandings, as well as the way language is used; a way to reflect on, and structure research; a way to understand the research context and to appreciate a diversity of understandings; and a way to create space for understandings to emerge. An approach is proposed that can inform research in diverse stakeholder contexts, in a wide range of fields, based on an awareness of metaphor

Health care and social justice evaluation : a critical and pluralist approach

This thesis proposes a critical, systemic and pluralist approach to evaluating health programs. It examines ways in which efforts to promote equality and plurality are undermined by the application of foundationalist and universal conceptions of social justice and evaluation. This approach is developed within the current debate taking place in the field of Critical Systems Thinking, particularly in the area of the evaluation of social and health programs.It is argued that the potential for equality and plurality in Western societies goes beyond the questions of economic exploitation, military, cultural and political oppression and encompasses the relation between power and knowledge which is inherent in rationalities governing the formulation, the implementation and the operation of health programs. The thesis offers an alternative view of social justice that conciliates equality with plurality, and promotes these values through an evaluative procedure. Using Foucault's philosophy, it is proposed that a nonfoundationalist conception of social justice should be understood in terms of the interactions between three areas of human activity, namely knowledge, morality, and techniques and technologies of government. As regards the possibilities for developing a non-foundational and non-universal evaluative judgement, the thesis assumes a decentered conception of truth in the analysis of society and morality, and acknowledges the role of power as factor of generalisation or diversification of truth. Thus complexes of power-knowledge-morality are at the centre of our evaluative judgements of social justice. In order to encourage equality and plurality, this thesis proposes a rationale for evaluation that includes three main methodological guidelines: a decentered conception of critique regarding the problems and negative effects of a health program (unfolding in reverse); the promotion of subjectivity (autonomy, diversity, solidarity) through self-knowledge and self-regulation of desires (folding); and participation in the reordering of society through an ethical and political process of decision-making (ethical and political unfolding of the situated truths of the subjects). The processes are designed to interrelate and iterate in a complex way. They should include the exploration, choice and combination of methods and/or their parts, and of the strategic positions in scientific and ethical discursivities by thinking critically and acting in a situated and participative way

A systems thinking approach to the planning of rural telecommunications infrastructure.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.The research reported in this thesis is concerned with the provision of telecommunications infrastructure to rural areas in developing countries. The primary focus is to improve the current practice in the planning of such infrastructure. An in depth analysis of the critical issues that characterise rural telecommunications in developing countries revealed that the rural telecommunications system is not just a technological system but a complex system of people and technology interdependent on other systems/subsystems. A systems approach lead to a conceptual model of The Rural Telecommunications System as an open complex sociotechnical system. Consequently the planning of rural telecommunications infrastructure requires an approach that addresses such complexity. Critical systems thinking was chosen as the overall systems thinking approach for the development of a systemic planning framework for rural telecommunications infrastructure, that accommodates the system of problems inherent in the complex sociotechnical rural telecommunications system. The framework was built on the principles of Multimethodology and consists of Interactive Planning as a general orientation, mixed with Interpretive Structural Modelling and Critical Systems Heuristics. The framework is enhanced by the inclusion of current techniques from Systems Engineering practice, and softer techniques such as rich pictures. A case study based on the Mapumulo rural area in KwaZulu Natal was used for the practical validation of the framework