Gastronomy and creative entrepreneurship in rural tourism: encouraging sustainable community development

No abstract available

Dynamics of participation: Access, standing and influence in contested natural resource management

Although participative measures were introduced in 2001 to support dialogue on large carnivore presence and the aims and justifications of national predator policy, polarization has remained between pro-wolf groups promoting fauna diversity and the groups maintaining that rural Sweden is jeopardized by the reappearance of large carnivores. Through empirically investigating the participatory process itself, we address how the local environment of RPG members is situated in the deliberative setting of the groups. By taking account of the local community context, we emphasize that divergent perceptions of the local environment, together with the landscape as a context of relationships between those using its resources, form an informed basis for action. In sum, we examine how participatory voices can be supported and maintained given the existence of a contingent social situation in which particular interests, values, and norm systems mee

Local Environment at Stake : The Hallandsås Railway Tunnel in a Social and Cultural Context

A major trend in facility siting research focuses on economic and psychological aspects of land-use regarding the location of potentially hazardous technological facilities including storage for high-level radioactive waste, landfills, chemical plants, large-scale dams, or waste incinerators. Such facilities frequently have profound environmental impact and are often understood by local citizens as intrusions on their environment that threaten landscape, place, and community. This investigation of local responses to facility siting is grounded in social anthropological theories of landscape and place. The study addresses the social and cultural impacts of the building of a railway tunnel through the Hallandsås ridge in an agricultural area in the southwest of Sweden. This tunnel project has met with technological difficulties and environmental problems such as a lowered groundwater table and toxic contamination of groundwater, soil, and surface water. A principal concern in this dissertation is how homeowners’ perceptions and views of the landscape, place, and locality—that is, their local environment—has been affected by the building of a tunnel beneath their farms and homesteads. The four articles on which the thesis build are derived from anthropological fieldwork carried out among local residents affected by the Hallandsås tunnel project. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, collaborative photography, nature walks, and participant observation at public meetings, between the years 1999 and 2003. The main findings of the study suggest that the construction of the tunnel and the subsequent environmental consequences have given rise to an increased sense among affected residents of the fragility and uncertainty of life systems and people’s livelihoods. Feelings of uncertainty regarding the future of the community and the landscape have stimulated a discourse about local history and collective memories bearing on the local environment. Shared responsibility for nature and the local environment is another theme. The building of the Hallandsås railway tunnel has both reinforced local identity within the rural community of affected residents and incited conflict as to how the natural resources of the area should be understood and interpreted. Groundwater issues play a central role in land-use disputes generated by the tunnel project. Groundwater serves as a ‘boundary object’ bordering the domains of the concerned parties: the local community and the Swedish National Rail Administration

Conflicting perspectives on water in a Swedish railway tunnel project

The building of a railway tunnel through the Hallandsas ridge in the southwest of Sweden resulted in sinking groundwater levels and a toxic spill for the local community. As a result, this highly technological project expanded from the addressing of technological and economic issues of rail traffic and tunnel building to include issues of environmental harm and how to assess and manage the geology of the ridge. A central concern for local residents as well as for the developer has been how to view and interpret the resource of groundwater. This article focuses on groundwater as a boundary object, bordering the domains of the technologists and the local community. In this situation, technological understanding and knowledge confronts an experience-based understanding and a symbolic interpretation of the water resource

Exploring instrumental and symbolic constitutive conditions for environmental communication: The case of the Swedish Wildlife Management Delegations

Session abstract A4.

Dynamics of participation: Access, standing and influence in contested natural resource management

Although participative measures were introduced in 2001 to support dialogue on large carnivore presence and the aims and justifications of national predator policy, polarization has remained between pro-wolf groups promoting fauna diversity and the groups maintaining that rural Sweden is jeopardized by the reappearance of large carnivores. Through empirically investigating the participatory process itself, we address how the local environment of RPG members is situated in the deliberative setting of the groups. By taking account of the local community context, we emphasize that divergent perceptions of the local environment, together with the landscape as a context of relationships between those using its resources, form an informed basis for action. In sum, we examine how participatory voices can be supported and maintained given the existence of a contingent social situation in which particular interests, values, and norm systems meet<br /

Quota-regulated hunt for wolves in Sweden: Analysis of media frames 2010 and 2015

Session abstract A4.

Frontline bureaucrats in wildlife management : Caught in the dilemma between effectiveness and responsiveness

Frontline bureaucrats are positioned at the interface between citizens and the state. They convert political resolution into action and in effect form the core of many public decisions through interaction and communication with both the recipients of those decisions and upper management levels that initiate them. However, dilemmas often arise when frontline bureaucrats attempt to translate political goals and strategies into local administrative praxis. The case of large carnivore management in Sweden will be used to demonstrate the insuperable difficulties that can arise when managers simultaneously need to balance the bureaucratic tasks of planning, executing, and evaluating performed decisions with attending to calls for increased responsiveness to public values in order to improve the delivery of service. This responsiveness is typically reflected through the new principles of public participation and collaboration, which are added to the bureaucracy to support the integration of broader sets of interests, experiences, and knowledge. In such an environment, the work of frontline managers becomes even more crucial in order to balance and align policy goals with the need to enhance public involvement. Our study reveals that in striving to meet the formal policy requirement to implement and lead collaboration (which in turn creates the central dilemma that concerns us here) managers develop strategies to secure effectiveness rather than responsiveness. Actually, they have few possibilities to do, otherwise when the latest policy edict clearly instructs the authorities to oversee the effective implementation and achievement of goals, leaving little opportunity to pursue genuine collaboration