The International Journal of

Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies

ThESocIalScIEncES.com

VOLUME 9 ISSUE 3-4

The International Journal of

Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies …………………………………

The Social Sciences Collection

VOLUME 9 ISSUE 3-4

JULY 2015

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

www.thesocialsciences.com

First published in 2015 in Champaign, Illinois, USA

by Common Ground Publishing LLC

www.commongroundpublishing.com

ISSN 2329-1621

© 2015 (individual papers), the author(s)

© 2015 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground

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The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies

is peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterion-

referenced article ranking and qualitative commentary,

ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance

and highest significance is published.

EDITOR

…………………………………

Gerassimos Kouzelis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD – THE SOCIAL SCIENCES COLLECTION

…………………………………

Patrick Baert, Selwyn College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

Andreja Bubic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

Norma Burgess, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA

Hillel Goelman, University of British Columbia, Canada

Peter Harvey, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia

Vangelis Intzidis, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece

Paul James, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Ivana Batarelo Kokic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

Gerassimos Kouzelis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Massimo Leone, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

José Luis Ortega Martín, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

Francisco Fernandez Palomares, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

Constantine D. Skordoulis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Sanja Stanic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

…………………………………

Ashaki Leidia Dore

Assefa Tefera Dibaba

Ayfer Aydıner Boylu

Ayse Belgin Aksoy

Ban Qman

Banu Baybars Hawks

Barbara Burgess-Wilkerson

Ben Shacklette

Cal Clark

Camille Nakhid

Carl Hylton

Carla Vidal Figueroa

Carlie D. Trott

Carlos Amunátegui Perelló

Comfort Abosede Okotoni

Coral Cara

Corina Gruber

Cornelia R. Karger

Cory Callahan

Daniel Pasciuti

Darquise Lafrenière

David Bruce Lundberg

Denise Orpustan-Love

Deniz Cetin

Deslea Konza

Diane Costello

Dimitrios Vlachopoulos

Dominic Hakim Silvio

Drene Somasundram

Eloisa G. Tamez

Emanuele Achino

Evon Spangler

Fatma Gülengül Birinci

Fatos Tarifa

Florin Oprescu

Francisco Ródenas Rigla

Freddy Zapata

Fulya Kama Ozelkan

Ganapatrao Yashwant Shitole

Golam M. Mathbor

Gonca Erim

Gouri Sankar Banerjee

Helaine Ciporen

Hülya Öztop

Humera Aftab Sheikh

Hyunsook Kang

Idongesit Eshiet

Imen Ben Abda

Indra Maipita

Ira Konstantinou

Isah Adamu

Jacinta Byrne-Doran

Jacqui Rogers

James Hendricks

James Juniper

James Moir

Jarmila Hickman

Jason Powell

John W. Friesen

Johnitha Watkins Johnson

Joos Meikhel Gaghenggang

Jonathan H. Westover

Jorge Garcés Ferrer

José Azoh

Jose Juan Bautista

Jose Maria G. Pelayo III

Joseph Adetunji Adepoju

Kainat Bashir

Kamil Dobeš

Kam-yee Law

Karen Yu

Katarzyna Lewtak

Kathryn Riley

Katy Goldstraw

Kayo Nakazawa

Kyung Hong

Langtone Maunganidze

Leocadia Díaz Romero

Lester J. Thompson

Leticia De Leon

Lilach Marom

Liliana Rodríguez-Campos

Lisa McDonald

Lisa Quinn-Lee

Lisette E. Torres

Liz Jackson

Lucia Taylor

Lucky Daniel Tshireletso

Lynda S. Livingston

M. Serhat Öztürk

M. Tait

Mahadevi Ramakrishnan

Makoto Sakai

Manon Robillard

Marcelo E. K. Buzato

Marcelo Fetz

Margaret Cavin Hambrick

Margaret Coombes

Margarida Faria

Maria Divina Gracia Roldan

Marilyn Whitney

Marin Spetič

Marjorie P. Callahan

Mark Price

Mary S O’Halloran

Masrur Alam Khan

Matthew F. Filner

Mayka Garcia-Hipola

Meena Chavan

Meltem Karakuyu

Merle Hearns

Mervyn Wighting

Michael Perini

Michael Skoumios

Michal Ostrovsky

Michèle Minor-Corriveau

Michelle L. McCrory

Milana Hachaturova

Ming-chun Sinn

Minna Maunula

Mir Rabiul Islam

Mireia Tintore

Mohammad Essawi

Mohammad Jawarneh

Mohd-Dan Jantan

Mom Bishwakarma

Monique Lortie

Muhammad Asif Malik

Mohammed Hailat

Muhammad Kabir Yusuf

Myint Zan

Myra Suzanne Franco

Nasser A Alfaleh

Natalia Hernandez

Nattapat Sarobol

Nazli Sila Cesur

Nceba Nyembezi

Never Assan

Nicholas Evans

Nicholas Mangos

Nicole De Wet

Nimisha H. Patel

Nola E. Harvey

Noor Asilah Nordin

Nopporn Sarobol

Norma Joyner

Norma Rodriguez-Roldan

Oana Mihaela Stoleriu

Octavian Groza

Oksana Jenenkova

Olga Achón Rodríguez

Orli Noriany

Ozlem Yagcioglu

P. David Marshall

Paolo Russu

Patricia B. Strait

Paul Stepney

Paul Throssell

Paula Benevene

Paula Curvelo

Paula Hodgson

Paula Rama Silva

Pauline Garcia-Reid

Peter Stone

Petra Adolfsson

Phyllis Ghim Lian Chew

Pinar Enneli

Pnina Levi

Poonam Dev

Prajakta Pradhan

Pratyush Vatsala Tripathi

Preeti Sharma

Quan V. Le

Quynh Lê

R. Scott Smith

Rafik Massoudi

Rafik Santrosyan

Rania Khalil

Raphael Avornyo

Rasa Balockaite

Rebekkah Stuteville

Rema Haddad

Rex Perez Bringula

Rick Chew

Robert J. Reid

Roberto Bergami

Rodanthi Tzanelli

Roger Hopkins Burke

Rokiah A. Kadir

Roman Hájek

Ronnie E. Mahler

Rosa Munoz-Luna

Rosalie Otters

Roshni Narendran

Roxanne Bélanger

S. Perks

S. A. Hamed Hosseini

Saadia Mirza

Salah Hailat

Samantha Manley

Samson Chiru

Sandra Brigsa

Sara Terrell

Sarah Gilkerson

Sarah Higley

Sarah Pollock

Satu Uusiautti

Savannah Carroll

Scott H. Clarke

Scott Smith

Scott Sworts

Seher Cesur-Kılıçaslan

Shagufa Kapadia

Shannon Peterson

Sharon Pelech

Sheridy Leslie

Shiri Kuzniz

Sibel Erkal

Sima Farshid

Sirima Ussawarakha

Sneha Annavarapu

Snjezana Bilic

Somayeh Karimi

Sonja Rizzolo

Stacey Hills

Stanley McCray

Stephen Burgess

Stephen Micheal Charter

Steven White

Sudata DebChaudhury

Svetlana Sablina

Szilvia Simai

Terry-Ann Jones

Theodore Michael Christou

Theresa Russo

Therese Madden

Thomas A. Budd

Thomas Brian Whalen

Thomas Kong

Tiantian Zheng

Tim MacNeill

Tony Kandaiya

Uche Eme-Uche

Umesh Sharma

Uzma Mukhtar

Valentine J. Belfiglio

Vincenzo Corvello

Virasuda Sribayak

Weng Marc Lim

William Hey

William L. Blizek

William Pelech

Wosenseged Kidane

Yasin Kerem Gümüş

Yong Ryung Lee

Yonghui Wang

Yun Yue

Zeynep Çopur

Ziqi (Nina) Zhuang

Scope and Concerns

THE DISCIPLINARY WORK OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

…………………………………

Each of the sciences of the social is marked by its distinctive disciplinary modes—the thinking

practices of Anthropology, Archaeology, Behavioral Sciences, Cognitive Science,

Communications, Cultural Studies, Demography, Economics, Education, Geography,

Humanities, Law, Management, Media, Politics, Policy Studies, Psychology, Social Welfare,

Sociology, to name a some of the principal sciences of the social. The disciplinary variation is so

broad that practitioners in some of these areas may not even consider their discipline a ‘science’,

whilst in other disciplines there is a general consensus about the scientific character of their

endeavor.

What is a discipline? Disciplines represent fields of deep and detailed content knowledge,

communities of professional practice, forms of discourse (of fine and precise semantic distinction

and technicality), areas of work (types of organization or divisions within organizations such as

academic departments or research organizations), domains of publication and public

communication, sites of common learning, shared experiences of apprenticeship into disciplinary

community, methods of reading and analysing the world, ways of thinking or epistemic frames,

even ways of acting and types of person. ‘Discipline’ delineates the boundaries of intellectual

community, the distinctive practices and methodologies of particular areas of rigorous and

concentrated intellectual effort, and the varying frames of reference used to interpret the world.

And what is a science? Some of the studies of the social habitually and comfortably call

themselves ‘sciences’, but others do not. The English word ‘science’ derives from the Latin

‘sciens’, or knowing. Return to the expansiveness of this root, and studies of the human could lay

equally legitimate claim to that word.

‘Science’ in this broadest of senses implies and intensity of focus and a concentration of

intellectual energies greater than that of ordinary, everyday, commonsense or lay ‘knowing’. It is

more work and harder work. It relies on the ritualistic rigors and accumulated wisdoms of

disciplinary practices.

These are some of the out-of-the-ordinary knowledge processes that might justify use of the

word ‘science’, not only in the social sciences but also in the natural, physical, mathematical and

applied sciences:

Science has an experiential basis. This experience may be based direct personal intuition of

the already-known, on interests integral to the lifeworld, on the richness of life fully lived. Or it

might be experience gained when we move into new and potentially strange terrains, deploying

the empirical processes of methodical observation or systematic experimentation.

Science is conceptual. It has a categorical frame of reference based on higher levels of

semantic precision and regularity than everyday discourse. On this foundation, it connects

concept to concept into schemas. This is how science builds theories which model the world.

Science is analytical. It develops frames of reasoning and explanation: logic, inference,

prediction, hypothesis, induction, deduction. And it sees the world through an always cautiously

critical eye, interrogating the interests, motives and ethics that may motivate knowledge claims

and subjecting epistemic assumptions to an ever-vigilant process of metacognitive reflection.

Science is application-oriented. It can be used to do things in the world. In these endeavors,

it may be pragmatic, designing and implementing practical solutions within larger frames of

reference and achieving technical and instrumental outcomes. Or it may be transformative—

redesigning paradigms, social being and even the conditions of the natural world. What, after all,

is the purpose of knowing other than to have an effect on the world, directly or indirectly?

Science can be any or all of these experiential, conceptual, analytical and applied things.

Some disciplines may prioritize one or other of these knowledge processes, and this may be the

source of their strength as well as potential weakness. In any event, these are the kinds of things

we do in order to know in the out-of-the-ordinary ways worthy of the name ‘science’.

The Social Sciences conference, journals, book series and online media provide a space to

discuss these varied disciplinary practices, and examine examples of these practices in action. In

this respect, their concern is to define and exemplify disciplinarity. They foster conversations

which range from the broad and speculative to the microcosmic and empirical.

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK OF THE SOCIAL AND OTHER

SCIENCES

…………………………………

Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work crosses disciplinary boundaries.

This may be for pragmatic reasons, in order to see and do things that can’t be seen or done

adequately within the substantive and methodological confines of a discipline. Broader views

may prove to be more powerful than narrower ones, and even the more finely grained within-

discipline views may prove all-the-more powerful when contextualized broadly. The deeper

perspectives of the discipline may need to be balanced with and measured against the broader

perspectives of interdisciplinarity.

Interdisciplinary approaches may also be applied for reasons of principle, to disrupt the

habitual narrowness or outlook of within-discipline knowledge work, to challenge the ingrained,

discipline-bound ways of thinking that produce occlusion as well as insight. If the knowable

universe is a unity, discipline is a loss as well as a gain, and interdisciplinarity may in part

recover that loss.

Interdisciplinary approaches also thrive at the interface of disciplinary and lay

understandings. Here, interdisciplinarity is needed for the practical application of disciplined

understandings to the actually existing world. Robust applied knowledge demands an

interdisciplinary holism. A broad epistemological engagement is required simply to be able to

deal with the complex contingencies of a really-integrated universe.

The Social Sciences conference, journals, book series and online media are spaces in which

to discuss these varied interdisciplinary practices, and to showcase these practices in action

across and between the social, natural and applied sciences.

WAYS OF SEEING, WAYS OF THINKING, AND WAYS OF KNOWING

…………………………………

What are the distinctive modes of the social, natural and applied sciences? What are their

similarities and differences?

In English (but not some other languages), ‘science’ suffers a peculiar semantic narrowing. It

seems to apply more comfortably to the natural world, and only by analogy to some of the more

systematic and empirically-based of the human sciences. It connotes a sometimes narrow kind of

systematicity: the canons of empirical method; an often less-than reflective acceptance of

received theoretical categories and paradigms; formal reasoning disengaged from human and

natural consequences; technical control without adequate ethical reflection; an elision of means

and ends; narrow functionalism, instrumentalism and techno-rationalism; a pragmatism to the

neglect broader view of consequences; and conservative risk aversion. These are some of the

occupational hazards of activities that name themselves sciences—social, natural or applied. In

studying the social setting, however, it’s not good enough just to have a rigorous empirical

methodology without a critical eye to alternative interests and paradigmatic frames of reference,

and without a view to the human-transformational potentials of knowledge work.

Humanistic methodologies sometimes address the social in a deliberate counterpoint to

science, distancing themselves from the perceived narrownesses of scientific method. This move,

however, may at times leave science stranded, separated from its social origins and ends. The

natural and technological sciences are themselves more subject to contestation around axes of

human interest than the narrow understanding of science seems to be able to comprehend.

Whether it be bioethics, or climate change, or the debates around Darwinism and Intelligent

Design, or the semantics of computer systems, questions of politics and ideology are bound

closely to the ostensible evidence. Faux empiricism is less than adequate to the address the more

important questions, even in the natural and technological sciences. Science can be found lacking

when it is disengaged from the humanistic.

The humanistic, however, has its own occupational hazards: disengaged critique and

supercilious inaction without design responsibility; political confrontation without systematic

empirical foundation; ideological fractiousness without apparent need for compromise; the

agnostic relativism of lived experience and identity-driven voice; voluntarism that leads to a

naive lack of pragmatism and failure in application.

A reconstructive view of the social, natural and applied sciences would be holistic,

attempting always to avoid the occlusions of narrow methodological approaches. It would also be

ambitious, intellectually and practically.

In this context, the Social Sciences conference, group of journals, book Imprint, and online

media pursue two aspirations, two openings. The first is an intellectual opening, founded on an

agenda designed to strengthen the theories, the research methodologies, the epistemologies and

the practices of teaching and learning about the social world and the relation of the social to the

natural world.

The second opening is pragmatic and inventive. All intellectual work is an act of

imagination. At its best, it is ambitious, risky and transformative. If the natural sciences can have

human ambitions as big as those of the medical sciences—the fight against MS or cancer or

Alzheimer’s, for instance—then the social sciences can have ambitions as large as to settle the

relation of humans to the natural environment, the material conditions of human equality and the

character of the future person.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Volume 9, 2015, www.thesocialsciences.com, ISSN 2329-1621

© Common Ground, Authors, All Rights Reserved,

Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com

Table of Contents

Imaginative Forms Built through Citizen Engagement: Sustainable Food Systems

as an Ethics of Care ........................................................................................................ 1

Deborah Schrader and Lorelei L. Hanson

Evidence of Adaptation to Flooding from Three Regions in Bangladesh: A

Multidisciplinary Study ............................................................................................... 11

Valerie Ingham, Mir Rabiul Islam, John Hicks, Ian Manock, and Richard Sappey

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies

Volume 9, 2015, www.thesocialsciences.com, ISSN 2329-1621

© Common Ground, Deborah Schrader, Lorelei L. Hanson, All Rights Reserved

Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com

Imaginative Forms Built through Citizen

Engagement: Sustainable Food Systems as an

Ethics of Care

Deborah Schrader, University of Alberta, Canada

Lorelei L. Hanson, Athabasca University, Canada

Abstract: In this paper we explore the potential of citizen imaginings associated with municipal food policy development

to be utilized as building blocks towards the transformation to a more sustainable food system. We explore this potential through a case study of the development of “fresh, Edmonton’s Food and Urban Agriculture Strategy.” We start from a

position advanced by Wendy Mendes (2008, 945) that in making and remaking the city, governmental institutions need to

demonstrate greater flexibility and openness in their governance arrangements and institutional capacity, as well as “in

how the city’s imaginative form is reshaped and mobilized.” We employ an ethics of care as an analytical frame in

reading through in-depth interviews with citizens involved in the development of “fresh,” focusing on their descriptions

of sustainability and how to build a sustainable food system in Edmonton. Drawing attention to the ethics of care embedded in these imaginative constructions, we discuss how they can act as entry points into a social and economic

transformation process.

Keywords: Sustainable Food Systems, Ethics of Care, Urban Agriculture, Urban Food Strategy

Introduction

ithin food studies scholarship a debate has emerged about whether alternative food

activities, such as urban agriculture (UA), that attempt to create new policy, build

food infrastructure, encourage land preservation, expand access to healthy food, and

provide food education for citizens (Levkoe 2011), challenge or uphold neoliberalism. The

debate is guided from an understanding of two opposing food system narratives – conventional

and alternative – both of which describe the ways food is produced, processed, distributed,

consumed and disposed of within a social context guided by neoliberalism (McClintock 2014).

Some scholars (e.g., Lavid 2013; Mubvami and Mushamba 2006; Mougeot 2006) maintain that

these food activities challenge the industrial food system as they build community, diversify and

expand local economies, reduce environmental impacts, and give citizens healthier food choices.

Other critical social scientists (e.g., Agyeman and McEntee 2014; DeLind 2011; Levkoe 2011)

have contested the popular assumptions about UA arguing that the outcomes of these initiatives,

though well-intentioned, often support neoliberalism or are “reformist at best” (McClintock

2014, 148). The view is that grassroots and non-profit organizations fill the gaps left by the roll

back of the welfare state and acquiesce to, if not support neoliberalism by continuing to operate

within it.

Nathan McClintock (2014) attempts to move beyond this debate about whether alternative

food activities like UA are progressive or maintain the status quo by arguing that UA is

simultaneously both neoliberal and radical, as capitalist structures both obstruct and encourage

food initiatives. For example, a market garden exists on undeveloped land within urban

boundaries until land values dictate that development is more desirable. The garden fills a need

created by a gap in the local system by providing low-income families access to local food as

well as participation in an entrepreneurial farm venture, until the capitalist impulse of profit

accumulation overrides, and the landowner sells or develops the land, perhaps even for more

money as a result of the presence of the garden. The market garden is an UA initiative that over

time is both encouraged and limited by neoliberal capitalist structures. The key is to recognize

these inescapable contradictions and find ways to direct efforts and activities toward the “long-

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

term incremental process of reclaiming social life from an excessive reliance on market logic”

(Johnston 2008, 101).

Researchers and citizen activists are encouraged then to embrace, analyze and understand the

inherent contradictions of UA, so that it can be better positioned to support food and social

systems transformation. However, the application of this analysis on real life practices and

situations remains vague. How should a community or non-profit proceed with this analysis and

how can the analysis be used to help them undertake UA activities that work within the existing

system but are also helping incrementally transform the food system in fundamental ways? As a

starting point Wendy Mendes (2008) argues that the making and re-making of the city must be

imagined before it becomes real, and that governmental institutions need to demonstrate greater

flexibility and openness in their governance arrangements and institutional capacity, to allow

citizens city’s imaginative forms to be shaped and mobilized. Imaginings are a key component

then for a new system, but then what? To move into the connections between UA and broader

systemic change requires a framework that evokes intentional, responsive practices. An ethics of

care, a moral theory founded on relationality, interdependence and reciprocity, provides a

conceptual entry point for moving beyond embracing the contradictions inherent in UA

initiatives towards more transformative work by connecting these food experiences to a

potentially broader movement of systemic change.

Our research explores citizens’ imaginings of sustainability and Edmonton’s sustainable

food system as integral work in navigating the interconnections and intricacies of urban food

system transformation. To provide some context for this argument we present an overview of the

case study and research methods, briefly discuss an ethics of care, and then explore the degree to

which the four elements of care - attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness -

exist within citizens’ imaginings of a more sustainable food system, and thereby provide a value

framework that can inform food work directed at social transformation.

Background

Geographical Context and Local Food Activism

Edmonton is the capital city of Alberta, a province in western Canada. As of the 2011 Canadian

census, Edmonton’s population was 960,015 (Statistics Canada 2013). Serving as a

transportation gateway to Canada’s north and the Athabasca bitumen deposits, Edmonton is a

key supply and service center for crude oil and oil sands development, upgrading and refining.

As a result of a hot economy, Edmonton has become one of the fastest growing cities in Canada

over the past two years (ECF and ESPC 2014), and in the past decade has attracted tens of

thousands of new residents from other parts of Canada and the world. In spite of this growth, like

most urban centers across North America, Edmonton has a large population of people who live in

poverty and are food insecure. Last year alone, Edmonton’s food bank served over 40,000

different people (ECF and ESPC 2014).

Following a trend across North America, in 2012 the City of Edmonton adopted a food and

urban agriculture strategy, fresh, that it is now beginning to implement. The efforts of a local

civil society organization, the Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA) was a catalyst, if not

determining factor, in putting urban agriculture on City Council’s agenda. Throughout 2008 and

2009 GEA mobilized hundreds of citizens to attend hearings on Edmonton’s municipal

development plan (MDP) as a way to pressure council to develop a food and agriculture strategy

and preserve urban farmland, particularly in the northeast corner of the City. In the period

between the council meetings, GEA authored and presented a policy paper for Council’s

consideration, organized dozens of house meetings, guided bus tours to view urban agricultural

lands, and co-organized public awareness events such as The Great Potato Giveaway that

brought 15,000 citizens to urban farmland where 45,000 kg (99,200 pounds) of free potatoes

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SCHRADER AND HANSON: IMAGINATIVE FORMS

were distributed. These events ensured that many thousands of people were educated and

motivated to get involved in the development of local food policy. GEA was rewarded for this

work as a food and urban agriculture strategy was legislatively mandated in the MDP (AB

Municipal Affairs 2012).

The development of fresh occurred over 13 months and provided opportunities for over 3000

citizens to supply input on its contents. As a part of this citizen engagement, 15 stakeholders

were appointed by the mayor to an advisory committee and tasked with completing a draft

strategy, and 51citizens participated in a deliberative engagement process, meeting for six

Saturdays over two months to deliberate on key issues for inclusion in the food and urban

agriculture strategy. Recommendations arising from these two engagement processes, as well as

several others (e.g., key stakeholder workshops, public opinion and landowner surveys) indicated

strong support for preserving farmland and expanding urban agriculture within Edmonton. The

final draft strategy, written by City of Edmonton staff, did not mirror this emphasis but included

these two recommendations alongside seven other strategic directions. Consequently, the final

strategy received mixed reviews from some members of the advisory committee and many local

food activists. Nonetheless, in November 2012 City Council approved fresh, directed the

administration to appoint a food council to implement the Strategy, and promised continued

funding to support this work (City of Edmonton 2013).

In the end, GEA played a key role in building public opposition to fresh, but lost its

momentum and ultimately failed to meet its overall goal of preserving farmland within city

boundaries. In spite of keeping the preservation of urban farmland in the local news, and ongoing

organizing efforts, including participating in almost all of the City’s citizen engagement

processes, when GEA representatives appeared before Council in 2012 they not only found little

support for their position, but the mayor and several councilors questioned the premise of their

proposal to protect urban farmland by expropriation as there was no business plan to support it.

Hence, rather than transforming the urban planning discourse into how to create an innovative

urban agricultural hub in Edmonton, GEA ultimately fed a polarized debate about sprawl versus

farmland (Male 2012). Consequently, fresh in many ways paved the way for suburban sprawl to

proceed as usual rather than offering innovative strategies for supporting the local food economy

(Walters 2012).

Data Collection and Analysis

From 2008 through 2013 we undertook participatory action research on the development of fresh

and used three data collection methods: participant observation, surveys and interviews. For this

paper, the data utilized included our observational notes, and the 15 semi-structured interviews

undertaken with people involved in varying degrees with the development of fresh1. Those

interviewed included individuals who were very knowledgeable about the local and global food

systems through food banks, market gardens, organic farms and food activism. Some of these

people had been working on food system issues for five or more years, while others had very

limited participation in the alternative food system. All those interviewed were asked about their

impressions of fresh and its development, their experience in the food strategy development

process, and the steps required to move Edmonton toward greater food sustainability. For the

purposes of this paper, we focused primarily on examining the key informants’ views of

sustainability and what was required to build a more sustainable food system in Edmonton.

1 To protect the anonymity of the key respondents they have all been assigned a number ranging

from 1 – 15 (e.g., KR-6).

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Ethics of Care

An ethics of care is a moral framework that starts from the assumption that care is fundamental to

human existence and that human progress and flourishing are dependent on “attending to and

meeting the needs of particular others, for whom we take responsibility” (Held 2006, 10). Care

is defined as “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and

repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies,

our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining

web” (Fisher and Tronto 1990, 40). Care involves both the practices and values that sustain

social relations (Held 2006). Practices are actions that exhibit how and why we respond to needs,

while the values create evaluation parameters for those practices; we can act with care but we

also need an ethic to evaluate those actions.

An ethics of care alters the basic ways in which we understand and live our moral and

political lives as social relations become foundational to judgments and decision-making,

supplementing the more traditional criteria of efficiency, self-interest and impartiality.

Relationality, interdependence and reciprocity provide moral guidance in building and supporting

relations that are trusting, considerate and caring. In order to practice care, we need to pay

attention to and take responsibility for someone else, and be able to receive care. Rather than

only satisfying our own interests and needs, we conscientiously care for and build relationships

in response to the needs of others within specific circumstances. Situations of care can foster

imbalances of power, requiring full attention towards the mutuality of relationships. Also, the

negotiation of power relations can bring about clashes in values and interests. In this sense,

relationality foregrounds how “[p]ersons in caring relations are acting for self and other together”

(Held 2006, 12) with sensitivity to specific contexts. Enacting an ethics of care can thus be seen

as a process that involves four elements: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and

responsiveness (Tronto 1995; Fisher and Tronto 1990).

While the practice and values of care traditionally exist in one’s personal life, an ethics of

care extends these values and practices to function as a moral framework for decision-making in

broader terms. Caring relationships are defined by mutual dependence and the ways we can

realize that dependence in the interconnected personal, public, economic and global contexts of

our lives (Held 2006). Joan Tronto (1995, 145) argues that “care is not solely private or

parochial; it can concern institutions, societies, and even global levels of thinking.” Caring

relations provide a moral framework for organizing civic life, for creating laws, establishing

human rights, developing economic models, and providing public health care. Virginia Held

(2006, 19) asserts that as the social and political implications of an ethics of care are fully

understood, it becomes clear that “it is a radical ethic calling for a profound restructuring of

society.” Adopting an ethics of care as a political framework means that the foundational values,

organizational systems and activities all central to being human have to be reassessed.

Interview Transcript Findings

If the elements of care provide values and analytical principles that can inform practice directed

at social transformation, adopting a caring perspective requires that attention is paid to each

element, to those involved in the care process, and to the context within which the process

operates. The four elements of care – responsibility, competence, attentiveness, and

responsiveness – act as a useful planning and evaluative practice framework to ensure that an

ethics of care is fully realized. In asking key respondents (n=15) to define sustainability as it

relates to food and how to build a more sustainable local food system we saw caring relations

invoked repeatedly, particularly highlighting responsibility and competence while not often fully

exploring power dimensions and the need to build relations of reciprocity.

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SCHRADER AND HANSON: IMAGINATIVE FORMS

Practicing care requires intentional acts of responsibility for someone else in ways that

embed their needs in our practices to affect their wellbeing. In discussions of sustainability, our

respondents describe taking care often as stewardship acts that help reconnect humans to the

natural world in such a way that ecological processes remain intact or are restored. One

respondent described these as broad sustainability practices; “You don’t deplete the ground. You

don’t pollute the water. You don’t pollute the air …people can participate in it” (KR-1). Given

that the respondents were asked to define what sustainability meant in relation to food, UA

initiatives were the medium for building care relations to other people and healthy communities

while also caring for the natural world. As this respondent explained, her UA work is directed at

“reconnecting our relationships with the producers and each other through food” (KR-3).

Respondents provided examples of sustainability activities that they were either aware of or

involved in, placing an emphasis on public engagement towards building a local sustainable food

system, through citizen involvement in civics (n=5), community development activities (n=4),

grassroots mobilization (n=3), and building partnerships (n=3).

Competence describes that ability to provide effective and appropriate care to another, and to

adequate knowledge being created and shared. When asked to describe key elements to help

move Edmonton towards food sustainability, effective education and information was the most

common element cited (n=8). Respondents detailed education as a way to increase citizen

awareness about food systems, to connect people to their food sources and providers, and to learn

about nutrition, health and life skills. Respondents describe that this knowledge building and

sharing process increases citizen concern for food issues and builds the collective voice, thereby

spreading the activities of food systems work to more community members. They saw a lack of

knowledge concerning food system analysis, identifying: the need for education in terms of

mentorship for new growers; public workshops on growing, preserving and cooking food;

childhood education on food consciousness; and improved public promotion of local food

opportunities.

Receiving care or responsiveness concerns both the ability to be cared for and the responses

to the care process; to be ‘well-cared-for’ requires a full circle of care, a willingness to both give

and receive care within an intentional context of support. The respondents discussed reciprocal

relationships built between producers and consumers through UA activities. One respondent

described getting to know a market gardener through their common civic work, remarking “now

when I go to the Farmers Market I look for Glory Gardens, right?... I’ve met her and you get a

sense of what she’s doing and some of the other farmers. And now I think a lot of those

relationships continue…” (KR-6). Similarly, another respondent involved in a public engagement

process focused on urban food and agriculture strategy, observed that for many of the

participants “a side effect was that they were more knowledgeable about local food and they

[then] cared about it” (KR-1).

Attentiveness points to the process of caring about another including a deep understanding

of needs, a critical view of practices and the relational power dimensions of a context, and a view

toward the future. When talking about a sustainable food system, respondents (n=6) spoke about

a better analysis and understanding of Edmonton’s context. One respondent described

understanding particular elements of a sustainable food system, the demands of those elements,

and the connections between them. “We have to look at everything that impacts food, it’s land,

water and people…youth. We have to look at the context and I think we have to respect the

potential of urban agriculture” (KR-12). Most of those interviewed also kept a view of the future

close at hand (n=10), seeing effective sustainable practices as requiring a long-range view, while

combining attentiveness for humans on the other side of the globe, other generations, as well as

the earth. As one individual explained, sustainability is thus, “doing everything we can to do now

to meet today’s needs, but not harming the needs of future generations… the seven generations

principle First Nations have” (KR-7).

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Exploring an Ethics of Care Discussion

A closer examination of respondent discussions of sustainability and key elements for

Edmonton’s sustainable food system reveal the four elements of care, responsibility, competence,

responsiveness and attentiveness, suggesting that an ethics of care already exists on some level

for many. Caring discourse, often expressed as stewardship practices connecting to both other

people and the natural world and as educational activities, was common to all interviews.

However, instances of care were not described as discrete elements, but alluded to throughout the

interviews. While respondents discussed or pointed to the values of care, “trust, solidarity,

mutual concern, and empathic responsiveness” (Held 2006, 15), they often failed to discuss the

connections between these values and how they are practically realized in their UA work.

Practicing care requires an orientation of caring, taking responsibility for someone else as we

ground our practices in their needs to affect their wellbeing and our own, while considering

power imbalances and responses to the care process. The element of responsiveness or the

reciprocal nature of caring, and the element of attentiveness through which we discern care

needs, are both fundamental to food work. Authentic reciprocal relations require people to take

on both positions of giving and receiving care, implying that attention has been paid to

understanding and balancing power relations. Unfortunately, expressions of care from our key

respondents most often describe the responsibility and competence elements while the

responsiveness and attentiveness elements are largely absent.

Within a care context, needs are discerned mutually and continuously by both the provider

and receiver of care. Attentiveness is important in food movement work as initiatives can become

misdirected and disempowering if caregivers assume to know what the needs are. Sustainability

and food systems look very different to someone struggling with the limitations of insufficient or

nonexistent housing than it does to a suburban homeowner. This was revealed by one respondent

who is involved professionally and personally in faith-based community development within the

economically poor inner city. “When we looked at say, the 70 folks at City Hall that spoke

[during fresh public hearings], there weren’t a lot of inner city voices that spoke that day, right?

The food issue being experienced from that side was a bit different” (KR-6). While this finding

was an anomaly, it speaks to the respondent’s understanding of care values within a specific,

practical context, enabling him to shift his understanding of needs and subsequent practices in

meaningful and timely ways as people and contexts change. In order to contribute to food system

change, UA activities must move beyond being initiatives created through charity models, such

as food handouts that create dependency while they diminish personal dignity. Instead, for

example, these alternative food activities could be the vehicle for providing jobs and networking

that would assist in skills development, leadership capacity building, and community

development. Understanding and balancing the elements contained within an ethics of care

framework provides distinct considerations and steps for the food movement to become more

vital vehicles of social change.

Research conducted with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), in which consumers

pre-buy food shares from producers, providing up-front capital at the beginning of the season,

assuring the farmer income, providing the consumer with seasonal food and creating relationship

opportunities for producers and consumers, describe these initiatives as expressions of an ethics

of care (Cox et al. 2014; Jarosz 2011; Wells and Gradwell 2001). CSAs build circles of care that

extend from the personal to the CSA community and to the environment as individuals and

families encounter other people and the natural world through their garden work. However, this

and many UA initiatives could further strengthen their contribution to food system change

through the application of an ethics of care framework. Deeper considerations for contextual

needs such as a lack of nutritious food in neighbourhoods with a shortage of food stores or

intentional shifts from personal to global realms of concern would grow circles of care. So while

an ethics of care is evident within CSAs, we argue that an even greater application of care values

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SCHRADER AND HANSON: IMAGINATIVE FORMS

can strengthen and diversify food movement work and connect that work to broader work of

social transformation.

Discussions focused on sustainability with key respondents did not reveal full considerations

for power relations, connections between UA activities and the broader social system, and how to

nurture reciprocal relations in these activities, all relational pieces. Kevin Morgan (2010, 1860)

articulates that a “new politics of care” requires care to be defined as a function of the public

realm rather than belonging solely to the private realm, and applied fluidly both locally and

globally as the context directs. This is not easy to do, to find moments of opportunity to

encourage people to shift from the personal to the political. It requires citizens to go beyond the

scope of their particular UA initiative in order to consider broader connections both in terms of

food and social systems transformation. Citizens could then recognize these initiatives as sources

of power within the broader context as these connections and relationships become apparent. The

politics of care requires us to have diverse public conversations around these relations, ensuring

that attention is continually paid to shifting needs, contexts and power. A care perspective

enables citizens to acknowledge where they are at presently while they identify and move into

“sites of political potential” (Cox et al. 2014, 62), opportunities to imagine and create further UA

alternatives with broader implications for social justice and transformation.

Conclusion

The development of fresh, Edmonton’s Food and Urban Agriculture Strategy provides a context

from which to examine the imaginings of citizens concerning sustainability and transformation

towards a sustainable food system in Edmonton, imaginings that precede change becoming real

(Mendes 2008). While people working in the alternative food movement like the immediacy and

direct involvement inherent in many UA initiatives, they don’t often recognize the power

relations or connections that these initiatives may have to a larger project of systemic social and

economic change. We have used an ethics of care, grounded in values and practices of

relationality, interdependence and reciprocity, as an analytic framework to highlight care

perspectives woven throughout interviews with key citizen respondents. The framework brings

new understanding to the power dimensions within both the industrial food system and UA

activities, as under-developed circles of care in the latter. It also highlights the challenge and

value of building reciprocity into alternative food systems and UA initiatives. Caring values are

present in the good work being done presently towards sustainable food systems. However caring

practices require further inclusion of all the care elements for the actual work to “maintain,

continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Fisher and Tronto

1990, 40). The care perspective already exists in the imaginations of our key respondents.

Building further capacity within UA initiatives for care attentiveness, responsibility, competence

and responsiveness in the public realm will strengthen their role in the transformation of both

food systems and social systems.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to graciously thank the key informants for their contributions to this

research and for the work they do towards food system transformation, and to the anonymous

reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on the draft paper. We would also like to

thank Athabasca University and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council for funding

the Alberta Climate Dialogue project, to which this research is connected.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Deborah Schrader: Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton,

AB, Canada

Dr. Lorelei L. Hanson: Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,

Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada

9

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Volume 9, 2015, thesocialsciences.com, ISSN: 2329-1621

© Common Ground, Valerie Ingham, Mir Rabiul Islam, John Hicks, Ian Manock,

Richard Sappey, All Rights Reserved Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com

Evidence of Adaptation to Flooding from Three

Regions in Bangladesh: A Multidisciplinary Study

Valerie Ingham, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Mir Rabiul Islam, Charles Sturt University, Australia

John Hicks, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Ian Manock, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Richard Sappey, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Abstract: This paper reports and analyses the research into community approaches to flooding in twelve communities in

three regions in Bangladesh during 2010. The study adopted a framework utilising approaches in disaster management literature, particularly the phases of preparation, response and recovery, and relevant multidisciplinary theoretical

approaches to disaster management organisations and social capital. The results suggest that there is inadequate state

organisation and resources, particularly for infrastructure, during preparation and recovery phases, yet social capital is evident during response phases. However, beyond social capital, communities and individuals develop methods of

adapting including changing farming practices, changing occupations, resettlement and migration to urban labour

markets. Unfortunately these adaptations tend to reduce the level of social capital available for disaster response.

Keywords: Flooding, Adaptation, Disaster Management

Introduction

uring the year 2010, qualitative research was undertaken in 12 villages within three

regions of Bangladesh, the regions being in different geographic parts of the country (the

northern plains at the foothills of the Assam Mountains in India’s Meghalaya state, the

central lowlands area, and the southern coastal area). While there has been some research into

flooding in Bangladesh and into relevant aspects of economic, political, and social life which

have implications for how communities and institutions address flooding (Brouwer, Akter and

Brander 2007) this project contributes to the inventory of data and subsequent analysis from a

multidisciplinary disaster management perspective. The research reflects the disciplinary

backgrounds of the authors in developing the three phase approach to disaster management

(preparation, response and recovery) and sociological literature exploring organisational and

social capital literatures. The gravity of flooding in Bangladesh provides the rationale to better

understand and design improved systems as addressing these issues has implications for life and

livelihoods.

Literature Survey

In an overall sense, the emerging literature on disaster management has rested upon

conceptualising the phenomenon of disasters as comprising a series of phases. The principal

theoretical purpose is to analyse disasters as a precursor to developing policies, systems and

practices to eradicate or minimise the human, economic, political and social damage which flows

as a consequence of their inevitability. There are generally accepted to be three phases of any

disaster: preparation, response and recovery. At least to some extent, these have influenced

overall approaches to disaster management and in doing so have raised wider questions about the

theoretical assumptions upon which policies, systems and practice have come to be based. The

three phase approach has yet to be significantly challenged, at least as a set of theoretical

propositions which can readily be applied. That understanding disasters, as far as possible given

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their unpredictability in form, intensity and location, leads to practical outcomes which mitigate

their impact, has an apparent inexorable rationality.

What has developed is an expanding array of paradigms which may be contrasted because of

their differing assumptions and characteristics (e.g. ‘dominant’ versus ‘vulnerability’ versus

‘resilience’, see Phillips, et al. 2010, p. 13). Such increasing diversity of theory has become

associated with ‘ideal type’ approaches drawn from the social sciences. Of significance here are

‘the technocratic approach’ and ‘the socially constructed approach’. Alexander (2002, pp. 212-

213) notes that this is an apparent contest between approaches and, crucially for our purposes in

this study, translates into broad theoretical, but also practical, contests between organisations

operating under the auspices of the nation state on the one hand and communities utilising social

capital on the other.

State Organisational Disaster Management

Understandably, disaster management literature has been built upon practice which has arisen

from the state as the primary source of disaster management. The role of the state is grounded in

a legitimate responsibility built into political systems to protect life and property. There is a

concomitant legitimate authority vested in the state through government to give effect to that

responsibility. This is overlayed by the reasonable assumption that natural disasters require

extraordinary powers and methods of management in the sense that authority takes forms that are

deemed to be more directive and enforcing than are roles in non-emergency situations, even if

they are at the expense of the established rights of citizens. Thus, there are the theoretical

elements of bureaucracy, assumptions as to the efficacy of authority and formal structures and

processes associated with militaristic models of control and a predisposition to technological

determinism which have come to comprise the foundation of disaster management (Alexander

2002; Lindell, Prater and Perry 2007; Phillips et al. 2010).

In broad terms, approaches which to varying degrees fit under such an umbrella, enshrine the

goals associated with improving disaster management without compromising the theoretical

approach or the authority and rationality of organisations which are forced to deal with the

practicality of disasters. In practice then, disaster management organisations, charged with

fulfilling the principal function of protecting life and property, behave as institutions. This

practice-driven approach and the attendant literature, remains dominant in terms of the politics

behind disaster management, including resourcing, training and application of ideas. This

remains its strength. One branch of the literature, not uncritically, deals with extensions of the

approach in order to have adaptations to the inevitability and unpredictability of disasters

incorporated into practice [e.g. enhanced technological systems (Islam and Chik 2011),

identification of flood-prone regions (Pielke 2000), improvement in management systems

including human resource development (Emdad Haque 2003), flood hazard mapping (Osti,

Tanaka and Tokioka 2008) and the economics of flooding (Freebairn 2006; Crompton and

McAneney 2008; Prosser and Peters 2010). That this overall approach continues to be the basis

for practice was reflected in the aftermath of floods in eastern Australia in 2011. The Queensland

State Government established an inquiry to identify lessons learnt and improvements in planning.

The approach was reflected in the terms of reference (see Queensland Floods Commission of

Inquiry). However, much of the emergent literature is critical of the approach, at least as it

stands, and is so in various forms beginning with Hewitt’s (1983) human ecology critique (see,

for example, Cannon 2000 and Alexander 2002).

Social Capital

The established literature on social capital reflects a widespread argument that modern society

has become more segmented in terms of a normative order and less cohesive in terms of a set of

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INGHAM ET AL.: EVIDENCE OF ADAPTATION TO FLOODING

values. In general, social capital refers to the structures, processes and cultures that generate and

maintain trust, cooperation and cohesion. Such characteristics of any society, while they take

different forms, tend to include formal and informal organisations, are participatory and

voluntary - as opposed to purely market-based - and are network-based rather than within

established and orthodox functional structures. There is now an established foundation of social

capital within sociology and there has been a development of it theoretically and empirically

(Portes 1998).

One significant argument or assumption is that social capital is collective by nature, and as

such is intrinsically of more value in building and maintaining a normative order because of the

underpinning of agreement, while institutions have to be underpinned by authority. However,

there is also ‘bad’ social capital, particularly in organisational forms such as authoritarian

decision-making, exclusionary practices (e.g. sexist and racist closure) and illegitimate objectives

and behaviour (e.g. organised crime). To some extent, the literature implies that social capital has

untapped potential and is ‘good’. Institutions, by contrast, were once ‘good’ but have become

weakened to the extent that they have shed much of that potential and lack equivalent potential.

Overall, a foundation for the efficacy of social capital has been cast in relation to developing

countries through its role in economic development (Woolcock and Narayan 2000).

Following Hewitt (1983), there has been an expansion of theoretical approaches to disaster

management which have in common a critique of ‘the technocratic’ and related approaches, and

the putting forward of alternative approaches which are based upon the role of communities

(Cannon 2000). Overall, social capital has come to be viewed as having considerable potential in

disaster management in general and specific applications (Mathbor 2007; Osti, et. al. 2008;

Zakour 2008; Yamamura 2010).

While much of the disaster literature has moved in the direction of social capital or socially

constructed approaches (see for example, Hewitt 1998; Tierney 2007; Norris, et. al. 2007) which

enhance community as the primary source of anticipated, credible and valued practice and

possibly theory as opposed to the state, this emphasis is not unproblematic. The existence of state

and community as actors in disaster management gives rise to a diversity of relationships which

can be complementary, substitutional and conflictual. Some of the literature is attempting to

move away from the state-community, and ‘technocratic-socially constructed’ dichotomies

towards integration, as approaches to disaster management (Golpalakrishnan and Okada 2007)

and as a wider context of economic development (Woolcock and Narayan 2000).

Thus it is possible to view the institutional and social approaches to disaster management as

two extremes of a continuum. Any given disaster situation will exhibit a mixture of both

institutional and social responses and can be represented by a point on this continuum. Where

there is a relatively even spread of activity between the two constructs, we would expect that the

interaction between the two would be dominated by complementary relationships. Where activity

is strongly biased to either the institutional or the social, we might expect either substitutionary

or conflictual relationships to dominate. Further, it might reasonably be expected that

relationships will change over time along with changing circumstances and responses to them.

Where the relationships are complementary, and therefore reinforcing, we would expect the

quality of activity to improve overtime. Where relationships are substitutionary or conflictual, the

effectiveness of action may well show a decline over time and lead to a decline in resilience. The

purpose of the research discussed in this paper is to identify the process by which flooding in

Bangladesh is currently managed and to critically evaluate the principal dimensions of the

process and the different approaches to managing flooding and how they might be changing. The

current research seeks to answer three questions: (1) What is the extent of the integration

between state, NGOs and community in the response to flooding in the case of Bangladesh in

each of the three phases of preparation, response and recovery? (2) To what extent can the

activities of each group be seen to be complementary, a substitute or creating conflict in any

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existing integrated relationship? (3) How is the ongoing adaptation to flooding impacting on

response, and therefore on the maintenance, of resilience?

Methodology

The goal of the research was to understand how respondents perceived their community’s

reaction to flood events in terms of state response, NGO response, community response and

integrated response. The research therefore required, first an understanding of the region and the

major flood related issues drawn from secondary data and second, the collection of data based on

a qualitative, interpretivist methodology in recognition of the fact that a variety of interpretations

of events and of their underlying causes was possible. Such an approach necessitated the

development of a rapport between the researchers and the respondents. Thus the interviews were

conducted with the participants (often villagers and village elders) in the village and in the

presence of the community. Such an ethnographic approach enabled responses to be

contextualised through the use of independent notes taken by the researchers. The open

endedness of the research instrument also permitted the research direction to evolve. As this was

a qualitative research project, semi-structured interviews were utilised to gather data from three

regions which were selected for their broad differentiated geographical features which were the

subject of flooding, that is to say flooding from different sources and/or consequences as

discussed below. The initial interview questions were devised from the relevant literature, in

particular the key concepts of substitutional, complementary and conflictual. To this were added

questions seeking clarification, identification of causes and effects, patterns of facts and

interpretation of meanings and the significance of these. The follow-up questions were

unstructured and sought to add data about the process of flooding, particularly the different

phases and approaches to managing floods as a process.

The aim of this selection was to attempt to identify differences and similarities of

geographic, economic and social characteristics and community approaches to flooding. Twelve

villages were selected with at least two in each region. In all, approximately thirty interviews

were conducted. Since interviewees were drawn from government and community organisations,

villagers and people employed by or having experience with non-government organisations

(NGOs), there was in some cases an overlap (an individual may have been interviewed as a

villager and as an NGO employee, for example). The structure of the government disaster

response hierarchy is depicted in Table 1.

Table 1: Structure of the Bangladesh Disaster Response Hierarchy

Government level Prime person members

National Secretary (SEC) Government, NGO’s and civil society

District District

Commissioner

(DC); the DC has

responsibility for

about four UNO’s

Government, NGOs and civil society

Upazila Upa-zila Nirbahi

Officer (UNO)

Govt, NGOs and civil society, led by government

Union Council

(sometimes called

Union Parishad, or

UP)

UP Chairman

(sometimes a

woman); this is a

community elected

position

No government people are on this council,

although according to Mustafa the chairman, by

virtue of their administrative position, belongs to

local government (elected directly by people)

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INGHAM ET AL.: EVIDENCE OF ADAPTATION TO FLOODING

The data was collected by two of the authors, one of whom is fluent on the native language

of the participants. Responses to questions were recorded (translated when necessary) and then

transcribed by the researchers. A separate record of observations by the researchers was kept as

notes for later referral as is appropriate for ethnographic research. This practice of memoing also

served to ensure that an appropriate iteration of the data was undertaken as the data was

reviewed, assisting in the verification of findings.

The transcripts and researchers’ notes then underwent a process of data reduction with

similar topics being coded so that similarly coded passages, by the same respondent and across

respondents, could be considered at the same time. Once coded, responses underwent a process

of abstraction in order to combine categories that appeared to belong together and of comparison

in order to understand the similarities and difference occurring in the responses. Selective coding

was used in order to build information on our three themes of preparation, response and recovery.

The verification of our data relied, to a large extent, on this iterative process. However, emic

validity was also important to the extent that different groups interviewed were asked to discuss

findings derived from previous interviews with other participants and allowed the qualitative

investigative procedure to evolve. In addition, an element of triangulation was possible as each of

the five researchers (from different research backgrounds) independently analysed the data and

the data was drawn from respondents with quite varied backgrounds. The reflections of the

researchers, particularly the two researchers who undertook the field work, were regarded as an

invaluable source of data.

During 2010, research was undertaken in 12 villages in three regions of Bangladesh, the

regions being in different geographic parts of Bangladesh (the northern plains at the foothills of

the Assam Mountains in India’s Meghalaya state, the central lowlands area and the southern

coastal area). Table 2 provides a summary of the locations dates and times of interviews.

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Table 2: Activity chart of Data Collection, Bangladesh.

SUNAMGANJ

28 Nov Meeting with staff of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the

Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP) including their Director

General.

29 Nov Planning meetings with local research assistants.

30 Nov Interview with United Nations Organisation (UNO) Upzilla Nirbahi Officer

Interview with UNO Sunamganj Sada Officer

1 Dec Travel by speedboat to 3 remote hatis in southern Taipur

Hati 1: Patabuka: Interview of Union Member with translation by RA.

Hati 2: Selalitahirpur: Interview of village group.

Hati 3: Golabari: Interview with village group.

Interview with worker in the Centre for Natural Resource Studies, a local non-

government organisation (NGO)

2 Dec Gobindapur, 15 minutes from Sunamganj. Interviews with a social worker, a village

elder and the lady Chairman.

3 Dec Kaikkarpar: Interview with village group.

Interview with worker from Community management disaster Risk Reduction Project

(CMDPRP) and Voluntary Assistance for Rural Development (VARD).

4, 5 Dec Return to Dhaka.

SIRAJGANJ

6 Dec Left Dhaka for Sirajganj and arrived at National Disaster Prevention (NDP) training

centre and lodgings. NDP is an NGO. Interview with Director.

7 Dec Khokshabari Natun Para: Interview with a (female) Union Council Member.

8 Dec Stholchor: Interview with villager.

Chowhali: Interview with UNO representative.

Chowhali: Interviewed the Union Chairman.

Choddoroshi: Interview with Khaskawlia Union representative.

MUNSINGANJ

12 Dec Chakbara: Interviewed Gabura Union Council member

Garkumarpur: Interviewed Padmapukur Union interviewed villagers

Padmapukur: Same name as the Union, interviewed Union Council Chairman.

Interview with two workers from Shushilan Training Center.

13 Dec Vishnupur: interview with villager.

14 Dec Interviewed UNO of the Shamnager District/ Upazilla

Findings

While there is some dispute as to the identification and conceptualisation of the phases of

disasters, much of the literature reflects the assumptions of policy and practice and generally

proceeds on the basis that there are at least three broad phases: preparation for disasters; response

during them and recovery from them. Our research approach and broad categorisation of our

findings follows this approach.

Preparation

Content analyses of our interviews and researcher notes indicated that the preparatory phase

involved the principal issues of warnings, minimising flood levels through embankment-building

and dredging, and provision for evacuation and post-evacuation periods. Warnings may take

various forms and derive from various sources. They include official warnings from state

authorities such as meteorological forecasts and announcements through broadcasting. In general

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INGHAM ET AL.: EVIDENCE OF ADAPTATION TO FLOODING

and despite access to electricity (including battery sources), official warnings coming through

communication systems were regarded as not being disseminated widely, not timely and not

reliable in each of the three areas studied.

The predominant effective form of warning in all areas derived from local experience and an

understanding of weather - the sky, wind and the level and velocity of water. There was also

evidence, in all three areas, of a failure of cooperation between the villagers and the Government.

The established state (national and/or district) communication systems were often treated with

scepticism by the villagers and the Government often used the warning systems for their own

purposes. For example, during cyclone Aila, a level 4 warning was issued in order not to panic

the public (stay and defend) and came in as Level 7 (evacuate) way too late – the place was

flooded by then.

In all areas, government officials interviewed consistently referred to the existence of

government plans for flooding events. However, many also admitted that their implementation

depended on the provision of scarce resources. In the villages and surrounding areas in this study,

the principal forms of preparation were dredging rivers and constructing embankments to prevent

flood waters from invading and damaging and destroying crops, stock and buildings. In some

case, embankments were built by villagers out of bamboo but regardless of the material,

maintaining the strength of embankments was seen to be difficult. For this, government

assistance was required and this was frequently not forthcoming. Exacerbating this problem was

the fact the when government did act, it was reluctant to take the advice of locals, who, although

lacking the resources to undertake the building of sophisticated infrastructure, considered they

had an excellent understanding of the best places for barriers to be constructed.

There was little evidence of extensive evacuation planning. However, in some villages there

was the expectation that boats would be used to evacuate people to higher ground. There

appeared to be a community body of knowledge, based upon experience, as opposed to extensive

government planning, that there were exit routes by road to reach higher ground, particularly

sections of roads where people then lived for weeks or months.

The related aspect of preparation is the provision of buildings, particularly public buildings

such as schools, for shelter until flood levels recede. In a few cases, these were accompanied by

community, government and NGO provision of stored food. However, other material,

particularly firewood for cooking food, cooking pots, clothes and livestock, seemed mainly to be

moved and distributed by the people and assisted by government and NGOs after the flooding.

In the National Disaster Plan all NGOs have to ‘filter’ their plans and funding through the

national level, but we found that some NGOs were frustrated with the delays caused by this

process and were initiating strategies and providing funding from the ground level, and that local

villagers had more trust in the NGOs engaged in this practice rather than the national filtering

system, which siphoned off funding and somehow lost impetus in the journey down to the grass

roots level.

Response

Regardless of the forms and extent of preparation, the second phase of disaster management

starts at the time that the disaster occurs. Clearly, determining this point precisely is a matter of

judgement, but it involves moving from a state of preparation to an acceptance that a disaster has

begun or is inevitable, triggering an active response. One should keep in mind the fact that the

concept of preparedness in Bangladesh does not match that in the West. The forms that response

takes are in part influenced by preparation structures, systems and practices. In Bangladesh,

preparation is very basic and the requisite features of preparation do not exist in forms which

permit viable responses. Our research findings suggest that the imminence of a flood induces

immediate decisions by people acting together to protect buildings, equipment, livestock, crops

and life and/or to evacuate to safer areas.

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A clear priority was to make food supplies continuing as in severe conditions home-based

food preparation facilities (availability of cookers, fire wood and raw materials) are hampered.

This was important, regardless of staying in or near the village or evacuating. Food aid was

provided in some cases and the sources were government, NGOs, ‘rich people’ and union

officials who seemed to be in positions of authority in relation to distribution. However, across

all three regions, the main assistance was provided by the people themselves. When evacuation

was necessary, it was primarily organised by the people and was by boat or foot to shelters,

particularly schools or other buildings provided by the government or to the houses of relatives.

Again, food was viewed as critical and was either taken with the evacuees or provided, in very

limited amounts, in shelters or through government or NGOs. The range of time in shelters was 2

to 12 weeks. To the extent that there was evidence of officially organised responses, it seemed to

be mainly from union committees.

Recovery

In the aftermath of flooding, the final phase consists of rebuilding private physical assets and

public infrastructure. This is generally seen as the most important aspect of recovery, particularly

so that people can return to their homes and public goods and services are repaired and/or

replaced so as to return life to pre-flooding conditions. Rebuilding also re-establishes livelihoods.

Rebuilding houses was largely the responsibility of the people. However, there were some

sources of assistance, mainly through provision of building materials. These primarily arrived

through NGOs, either directly to villagers or distributed through union councils. Provision of

food, clean drinking water and medicines came from government or NGO sources. Some

buildings were replaced but others were not.

A key aspect of rebuilding when disasters take the form of floods and earthquakes is that the

land may no longer exist. This is a frequent occurance throughout the three areas of our study.

Land becomes inaccessible for many years and typically ownership issues arise because of the

loss of documentation during the intervening years. Clearly, livelihoods were interrupted,

sometimes for months, because flood waters did not always recede quickly and people who have

evacuated cannot return to their villages and farms. Government and NGO payments and food

distribution assisted in sustaining people until they could resume their work. In re-establishing

livelihoods, NGOs were also involved in the supply of seed, fertilizer and small loans. People

could also receive support from relatives and sell assets

Adaptation

One of the key findings of the research was the evidence of how the people, over time, have been

adapting in a variety of ways to their experience of flooding and the resulting changing nature of

the Bangladeshi economy. Given the geography of Bangladesh, the frequency of flooding and the

damage done to life and livelihoods, recovery in the forms of constructing or repairing homes

and other buildings and re-establishing farms to the point where they can produce at sufficient

levels to sustain producers and provide a platform for local economies, may be temporary.

Therefore, in pursuit of a more reliable basis for their livelihoods, it was found that people adapt,

principally by changing what they produce and by migrating to other areas of Bangladesh. For

farmers, this tended to be as ‘day labourers’. Earlier research found that people were seeking to

increase income by shifting from farming to other occupations which involved internal and

external migration (Nargis and Hossain 2006). In addition, Khandker (2009) argues that

improvements in infrastructure, access to micro-credit and increased mobility in labour markets,

has reduced the seasonal fluctuation in rural income. Diversity of income sources seems to

provide a more consistent income flow and Khandker argues should be supported by an

extension of a range of infrastructure and transfer payment policies.

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INGHAM ET AL.: EVIDENCE OF ADAPTATION TO FLOODING

Apart from migration, the other form of adaptation to emerge from the research was shifting

from crops and livestock to shrimp farming. Alauddin and Hamid (1999) note the ‘remarkable

expansion of shrimp farming’ but also its social and environmental costs. While it was

recognised by those interviewed that, unlike rice farming, shrimp farming was certain to produce

a result, there was clearly a cost. Although shrimp farming moved land usage from subsistence

agriculture to a market oriented activity it created a number of problems. The first was that the

ability of the population to feed itself was reduced – subsistence crops were not being grown.

The second was that the processes of shrimp farming – which involved putting holes in the levies

to provide access to sea water (necessary for the survival of the shrimp) – weakened the integrity

of the levies and made them more liable to collapse in time of flood. Thus the shrimp farms were

seen by many local officials to be against the short-term interests of the non-shrimp farmers but

also, in the long-run, against the interests of the shrimp farmers themselves.

Discussion

Our research results indicate that the state purports to play a role in all three phases of flooding.

However, notwithstanding the preparation and documentation of flood plans, the stated intentions

of the national government fail to be implemented at lower levels because of both a lack of

understanding of the functions expected at each level and a lack of resources necessary for flood

plan implementation. The main deficiency during the preparation phase is the lack of

infrastructure provision. Where infrastructure is provided, there is a marked lack of cooperation

and coordination between government organisations and locals to ensure that any infrastructure

provided is located to the best advantage. NGOs endeavour to provide assistance to villagers, but

they are also restricted in what they can do both by lack of funding and by government

regulations. Thus, preparation is poor and largely restricted to activities villagers can undertake

using their own resources.

Similar issues arise with respect to the response during a flood. For example, there is a lack

of infrastructure to evacuate people from the most threatened parts of the country. State

organisations such as the armed forces, police or a specific disaster management organisation do

not appear to be able to evacuate people by roads and rivers on a widespread and consistent

basis. Thus the principal form of response is collective, with villagers assisting each other to

evacuate. This generally involved transporting people by boat and walking in groups to higher

ground to get to roads which were likely to be elevated and thus safer. It was clear that there was

sufficient trust and established relations between families to organise and engage in evacuation.

In a few cases, this was supplemented by village leaders and union council members organising

evacuation routes and arranging for buildings to be made available for shelters. In this sense, the

clear line between state disaster management organisation at the village level and social capital

emanating from within villages to respond to floods was to some extent blurred – although any

response was clearly dependent on the latter.

In general, the evidence we gathered suggested that social capital was especially prominent

during the response phase compared with the preparation and recovery phases. Indeed, this was

necessary given that there was certainly less state disaster management organisation in the

response phase than in those other phases. That is, in the response phase, there was little in the

way of structures, systems and resources from government.

The government’s role in recovery was also significantly flawed. Apart from some repair

and rebuilding in relation to infrastructure and replacement of lost resources necessary for

farming, particularly seed, the government’s role was virtually non-existent in the recovery

phase. The evidence indicates that in recovery, villagers were largely left to their own devices

and to any assistance that could be provided by NGOs.

In summary, throughout the three phases, our findings confirmed that unlike some developed

countries where disaster management is largely if not totally conducted by government and

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government-funded voluntary organisations, disaster management in Bangladesh was primarily a

social response with some of the ‘gaps’ created by the failure of government to act being covered

by NGOs.

It appears that the key manifestations to managing floods in Bangladesh reflect a patchwork

of complementarity, substitution and conflict – but with the latter two tending to predominate.

Where government provided some of the infrastructure, for example large projects such as

building roads, embankments and dredging, it theoretically served as a complementary form of

the state-community relationship. However, this was inadequate and the complementarity

became or remained thin. Local knowledge of weather patterns is substituted for state warning

systems, social capital substitutes for the provision of state infrastructure, resources from NGOs

substitute for resources from state authorities. Indeed, the state-NGO relationship was

predominantly substitutional because villagers viewed the state and NGOs as alternative sources

of disaster management. Regardless of them being, or appearing to be, competitors, to move

from being substitutes to parts of a rational process in which the activities they undertook were

held to be complementary, would require overcoming the absence of clearly defined roles which

was found by Matin and Taher’s (2001) study of disaster management in Bangladesh.

Substitution may well be a viable form of relationship, but beyond clear roles there still needs to

be coordination within a planning and operational framework.

In connecting state and NGO organisational disaster management to social capital within

communities, the findings here indicate that the relationship at times became conflictual. This

seemed to arise because of distrust of the state and it came through the interviews in various

forms and particularly through all three phases.

That people in communities have developed a sufficiency of trust, building networks outside

of disasters and reciprocity was evident and could reasonably be said to have assisted in

established social capital such that it was activated especially during the response phases of

flooding, that is to say when it was most needed. However, this did not appear to be a static

situation.

As migration and changes to agricultural practices continue as part of the villagers’

adaptation to flooding, they are resulting in a decline in community resilience which, in the past,

has depended on relationships and cooperation between neighbours. Both forms of adaptation

have the consequence of weakening social capital and, because of the importance of social

capital in responding to flooding found in our research, will make communities more vulnerable

to future flooding. That is, one implication of these adaptations is the questioning of the potential

for social capital to remain in forms which are compatible with mutual assistance when

confronted by floods.

Exacerbating this trend is the fact that in the light of the costs of dealing with flooding in the

extensive, frequent and repetitive forms that it takes in Bangladesh, it is tempting for

governments to support relocation or changes to land use rather than attempt to minimise

flooding effects through the expenditure on large embankment and dredging projects. It is here

that the relationship between the state and local communities can be expressed in conflictual

terms.

Conclusion

The findings of this study indicate that there is explanatory value in following flooding as a

process of three phases. There is also value in comparing the relative importance of state

organisational disaster management with that of a socially constructed approach which

emphasises the role of social capital. In Bangladesh, and in the preparation phase, the evidence

indicates a deficiency of government in economic, but probably also political, resources to

construct, maintain and repair necessary infrastructure, particularly embankments and dredging.

There is also a significant weakness in warning systems and government evacuation planning. To

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INGHAM ET AL.: EVIDENCE OF ADAPTATION TO FLOODING

some extent this is mitigated by community preparation assisted by NGOs as a substitute for

government action although, to a limited extent there is a complementary provision of minor

services by the government. However, in the response phase, the state is frequently absent with

the local communities almost entirely reliant on the existence of social capital in their battle

against flooding. In the recovery phase, there is again some mixing of approaches in practice but

as with the preparation phase, the state does not generate and organise adequate resources to

rebuild communities. While the people can do some of the necessary recovery themselves, they

are very dependent on the complementary role of the NGOs which substitute for government.

Our research also established that there is a process of adaptation occurring through all three

phases, importantly in terms of developing resilient livelihoods. This is reflected in migration to

areas where new or extended livelihoods can be practiced and made less susceptible to risk. It

may involve resettlement such that people do not return to their villages. Where people remain in

or near their villages, the adaptation may involve changing to different farm products, methods

and different types of occupations, which to some degree seems to diversify yet also make less

volatile their income.

However, this adaptation also came at a cost in that it appears to be working to break down

the social capital that has been built up and which, in the absence of an adequate government

response to flooding events, underpins the resilience of the community in the face of flooding

catastrophes.

Even at a generalised level across the sources of data collection, particularly villages in the

three different districts, we could only record a diversity of relationships between government

organisations on the one hand and people on the other. These were reflected in episodes of

complementarity where cooperation and coordination were apparent but more often there

appeared to be gaps (i.e. steps missing from processes) or bottlenecks (i.e. an excess of planning

but unconnected to implementation). This was exhibited in substitution as a type of relationship,

where people provided the missing step which ideally could have been provided by government.

However, the other dimension to this was the substitution of government disaster management by

NGOs. At times, it appeared that the government, people and NGOs became entangled in conflict

without resolution because of the inadequacy of resources to establish a sustainable relationship.

Some of the literature on response to disasters is pointing to a more integrated approach

which would result in improved policy, systems and practice. Some empirical work indicates a

diversity of forms such as the need to address institutional weakness in the US after Hurricane

Katrina by implementing ‘integrated disaster risk management’ (Gopalakrishnan and Okada

2007) and the effectiveness of physical equipment and infrastructure on the one hand and

cooperative behaviour in different ‘sized’ disasters on the other (Yamamura 2010). Zakour’s

(2008) US study suggests the importance of network relationships, mainly at interorganisational

level, to promote the flow of resources such as transportation. Similarly, Keogh et al’s (2011)

study of a small community in Australia which exhibited developed social capital within the

town yet the resilience, it is argued, could be enhanced by the development of specific factors to

improve the disaster management process. Debates will continue but the point - albeit in a wider

development context - is useful: no person or institution has the resources to promote

development, so complementarities and partnerships across different parts of a society are needed

(Woolcock and Narayan 2000, p. 229). In Bangladesh, this calls for greater government action,

the provision of additional resources and the development of strategies to ensure that the

integrated response of government, NGOs and the people is increasingly complementary rather

than substitutary or conflictual.

We are aware of the limitation surrounding our interpretation of data, in terms of

triangulating the various academic perspectives of the researchers involved- these being based in

emergency management, economics and social and community psychology. There were a

number of understandings, reported and unreported, in this particular paper, which we

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synthesized into common ground. Our interpretation and reporting can serve to inspire

researchers with other perspectives.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Valerie Ingham: Lecturer, Course Coordinator, Australian Graduate School of Policing and

Security, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia

Dr. Mir Rabiul Islam: Lecturer, School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New

South Wales, Australia

Prof. John Hicks: Professor, School of Business, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South

Wales, Australia

Ian Manock: Lecturer, Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt

University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia

Dr. Richard Sappey: Adjunct, School of Business, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New

South Wales, Australia

23

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies is one of eight thematically focused journals in the collection of journals that support the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences knowledge community—its journals, book series, conference and online community.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies offers social science-based interpretations and interdisciplinary explorations of the connections between human and natural environments.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal invites case studies that take the form of presentations of practice—including documentation of socially-engaged practices and exegeses analyzing the effects of those practices.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

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