Through the Eyes of Another: Using a Narrative Lens to Navigate Complex Social-Ecological Systems and to Embrace Multiple Ways of Knowing

Abstract

Many social-ecological issues are characterised by a multiplicity of stakeholder voices with often fundamentally divergent values, beliefs or worldviews. Those differences in perspective can be also viewed as different narratives on individual, community and cultural scales that both express and reinforce people’s identity, value system and manifested behaviours. Navigating between those narratives requires approaches that facilitate the co-existence of multiple ways of knowing. The currently dominant knowledge production system of Western scientific knowledge often fails to meet those challenges due to its positivist and reductionist tendencies. However, embracing a co-existence of knowledges isn’t just necessary from a pragmatic perspective to adequately engage in those situations, but also represents an ethical imperative that includes acknowledging the colonial and oppressive history of Western scientific knowledge toward other knowledges, especially regarding Indigenous knowledge production systems. We propose adopting a narrative lens as a metaphor for embracing multiple ways of knowing and being as narratives play a key role for human cognition, communication and in shaping and expressing fundamental values at different levels. Using an example of contested narratives from a fisheries management conflict, we illustrate how narratives can help to develop a richer understanding of social-ecological conflicts. We also reflect on some narrative discourses commonly used in marine science that stem from the binary nature-culture divide prominent in Western scientific knowledge and discuss their implication for hindering sustainable ocean governance. Furthermore, we demonstrate how storytelling methods can be used to surface and share those narratives and to unravel the underlying values and fundamental beliefs and to re-shape them. The narrative lens we propose is suitable under multiple simultaneous disciplinary homes including Indigenous methodologies and systems thinking. They share the key features of having a holistic and relational approach that recognises the co-existence of multiple ways of knowing and being and use self-reflection as key for critical engagement with the situation and to surface and acknowledge one’s own internal narratives. This represents no exhaustive review of narrative inquiry, but a reflective journey illustrating how engaging with narratives can facilitate knowledge co-existence including different ways of relating to human and non-human beings.

Design-Driven Conflicts: A Design-Oriented Methodology for Mindset and Paradigm Shifts in Human Social Systems

“…In sum, creating a deep connection between the actors, the storyteller or designer, and the story itself are the essential steps that one has to take toward scaling up the process. Only through a deep connection between actors one can claim that the high ambition of a paradigm shift can gradually change the deep narrative of the context [1,53,87].…”

Ten years of Inuit co-management: advancing research, resilience, and capacity in Nunatsiavut through fishery governance

“…Sustainable management is important to ensure fisheries can continue to exist in this way, but the fishing industry is widely acknowledged to be a complex social-ecological system, meaning management can be difficult (Bavinck et al 2018;Vigliano Relva and Jung 2021). One possible way forward to is to include more collaborative and participatory approaches.…”

Design-Driven Conflicts: Exploring the Contribution of Design for Constructing Social Controversies from a Theoretical Standpoint

“…In this case, they often deploy a thorough and in-depth assessment of the context in order to reveal these values [82,124]. They use a variety of tools and techniques and utilize their design ability to distinguish values from other related concepts (such as needs and attitudes) [117,125,126]. In particular, by consciously using the culture of the intended user, they can assure that their artifact(s) have been accepted in a specific social system [89,120].…”

“…These tools, along with design abilities (i.e., using creative techniques to frame socially accepted values), bring more clarity for intervention and change in a social context [33,127]. Considering that one essential step toward network construction is knowing fundamental values (which require obtaining knowledge from context), the use of such design abilites to unfold fundemental values has a certain benefit by increasing the feasibility of deliberation in a complex context [25,126].…”