The role of researchers in deliberate social-ecological transformations: a structure-culture-agency approach

Abstract:   Awareness of profound ecological, economical and social crises interacting globally at various scales has brought up the notion of the necessity of a fundamental change, which has driven studies on sustainable change in diverse fields of knowledge. Resilience scholars have approached the issue through a systemic lens that integrates social and ecological phenomena, but scientists from the social “wing” have pointed out the need of adopting a structure agency approach. This study present an analysis of the contribution of researchers to the process of deliberate social-ecological transformation through the analytical lens provided by Archer’s Morphogenetic Approach, which was operationalized by means of the Social-Ecological Action Situation tool, whose purpose is tracking processes of emergence. This study revisited a well-established case of social-ecological transformation, the benthic fisheries governance change in Chile between 1980 and 1997. I found that researcher’s basic transformatory strategic agency was finding the way to personal and vested interests, otherwise engaging in activities such as dissemination of knowledge and advising policy processes carries costs. Researchers main contributions were producing knowledge relevant to different cultural systems as it enabled further structural change, disseminating and endorsing ideas and conducting policy pilots. The Morhogenetic Approach depicted the process of transformation as a sequence of short-life emergent outcomes driven by agency that resulted into a long-life emergent outcome that modified a structural re-arrangement. The combined theoretical-methodological approach is a promising frame to study social-ecological transformations as it managed to explain emergence of phenomena such as policy innovation, interaction between ideational and structural change, relation of interest and power, and it grasped interaction between simultaneous processes.