THE THEORY OF CO-MANAGEMENT AND ITS APPLICATION IN SOUTH AFRICA’S PFM POLICY
7.2. RESEARCH DESIGN
The research process falls within the realm of qualitative research, and uses deductive reasoning as its strategy for generating data. It is qualitative because it is an approach that is orientated around the collection of data from oral sources, thereby placing an emphasis on the use of language and discourse rather than converting data to numeric values, as is the case with quantitative methods (Kitchin and Tate, 2000).
The study is deductive because the research process began with a key question about the nature of participation that takes place within PFM practice in South Africa. It was hypothesised that PFM is consistent with strong ecological modernisation at the level of policy but that it is more consistent with weak ecological modernisation at the level of implementation within a local space. The theoretical frameworks of ecological modernisation and co-management guided the research process. After reviewing the literature on participation, PFM, co-management, and
ecological modernisation, a conceptual framework was devised (see Figure 7.1) which guided the research process. These theoretical frameworks influenced the kinds of questions that respondents were asked and the way in which the case study material has been interpreted.
Figure 7.1. Theoretical framework used to direct the study (after Christoff, 1996 and Obiri and Lawes, 2002).
Both bodies of literature make reference to a continuum. The ecological modernisation literature distinguishes between strong and weak ecological modernisation and acknowledges that there are also versions of ecological modernisation that occur between either extremes (Christoff, 1996). The co-management literature also incorporates the concept of a continuum, notably the PFM continuum (Borrini-Feyerabend, 1996; DWAF, 1999) and Obiri and Lawes’
(2002) people-forest management type continuum. Obiri and Lawes’ (2002) continuum is incorporated into the framework because it is more consistent with the researcher’s interpretation of participatory forest management, i.e. as a form of management that sits between the one extreme of community forest management and the other extreme of state forest management. Both bodies of literature therefore portray different forms of society and environment management options, which are reflected in Figure 7.1.
Strong/ Broad Ecological Modernisation:
• Changes in production and consumption through increased democracy, redistribution and social justice
• Is cognisant of social processes
Weak/ Narrow Ecological Modernisation:
• Techno-corporatist
• Economisation of nature
• Industrialised countries
• Scientific management
NATIONAL LEVEL? LOCAL LEVEL ?
Community Forest Management:
• Decision-making solely by community
• Any participation of the state is at the discretion of the community
• Participative
Participatory Forest Management / Joint Forest Management:
• Integrate planning, research, and decision-making into a comprehensive system with the combined participation of the state and the local communities
State Forest Management:
• Centralised, authoritarian structure
• Top-down approach to management and decision making
• May exclude local people
• Consultative
People-forest management types Ecological modernisation continuum
The framework in Figure 7.1 also includes an indication that different kinds of environmental management may take place at both a national and at a local level. The question marks within the arrow link back to the aim of the research; which is to ascertain whether the nature of PFM implementation at a local level in the case study area differs from the national level policy discourse, and whether this difference is more closely aligned to strong or to weak ecological modernisation theory. By addressing this question through the application of these theoretical concepts to a case study this research will add to these bodies of theory.
The research adopts a constructivist approach. This approach promotes the view that it is only through studying how actors construct the world that one gains an understanding of it (Kitchin and Tate, 2000). This approach assumes that there is a material reality which exists in and of itself, but it is only when this ‘reality’ is interpreted and constructed discursively that it becomes understandable. How this reality is constructed through language is a result of a combination of social, cultural, moral, political and other influences. These discursive constructions of reality articulate particular agendas and therefore it is arguable whether a discourse could ever be neutral (Potter, 1997; Terre Blanche and Durrheim, 1999; Bergeå and Ljung, 2003).
This constructivist approach has influenced the methodology of the study because, in order to study the empirical case study of the implementation of the PFM policy in the southern Cape, numerous actors would need to be interviewed and their constructions of reality analysed. Each actor brings to a situation their own combination of social, political, historical or moral issues that lead them to interpret the situation in their own way and so construct their reality in a different manner to another actor. For example, one actor may be adamant that the PFM process is a fully participative process, whilst another may have a different social and political background, which leads them to conclude that the process is not participative. There are likely to be contrasting views of reality, but the challenge is not to find the ‘objective truth’, which would be a positivist approach, but rather to understand why actors are led to interpret and construct reality in their particular way. This kind of analysis is especially beneficial to a study about a policy implementation process, because it affords a deeper level of analysis that may provide answers as to why the process has unfolded in a particular way.
To this end, discourse analysis is an appropriate methodology for understanding the social construction of reality, as it focuses on the manner in which versions of the world, of society,
events and environmental problems and solutions are produced in discourse (Potter, 1997).
However, before discussing this method of analysis, implications of upgrading the research from a Masters to a Doctoral thesis is discussed in Section 7.3 and the method of data collection is described in Section 7.4.
7.3. THE IMPLICATIONS OF UPGRADING FROM A MASTERS TO A