ABSTRACT
As society has become increasingly aware of environmental issues, the challenge of structuring public participation opportunities that strengthen democracy, while promoting more sustainable communities has become crucial for many natural resource agencies, industries, interest groups and publics. The processes of negotiating between the often disparate values held by these diverse groups, and formulating and implementing policies that enable people to fulfil goals associated with these values, can strengthen communities as well as tear them apart.
This book provides a critical examination of the role communication plays in social transition, through both construction and destruction of community. The authors examine the processes and practices put in play when people who may or may not have previously seen themselves as interconnected, communicate with each other, often in situations where they are competing for the same resources. Drawing upon a diverse selection of case-studies on the American, Asian and European continents, the chapters chart a range of approaches to environmental communication, including symbolic construction, modes of organising and agonistic politics of communication.
This volume will be of great interest to researchers, teachers, and practitioners of environmental communication, environmental conflict, community development and natural resource management.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|30 pages
Introduction and conceptual framing for community constructivity and deconstructivity
chapter 2|15 pages
Reframing conflict in natural resource management
part II|236 pages
Constructing and deconstructing community
chapter 3|22 pages
Process literacy
chapter 4|20 pages
Performances of an international professional community
part |70 pages
Modes of organizing – instantiating community through structural means
chapter 7|22 pages
Wildlife conservation as public good
chapter 8|21 pages
Dialogue for Nature Conservation
part |60 pages
Agonistic politics – instantiating community through dissent and non-traditional practice
chapter 9|15 pages
Deconstructing public space to construct community
chapter 10|20 pages
Communicating emotions in conflicts over natural resource management in the Netherlands and Sweden
chapter 11|23 pages
Community construction through culturally rooted celebration
part |40 pages
Cases that integrate the above perspectives
chapter 12|20 pages
Seized and missed opportunities in responding to conflicts
chapter 13|18 pages
Divergent meanings of community
part III|9 pages
Conclusion and summary