Challenging old models of knowledge and learning: new perspectives for participation in environmental management and planning.

Received knowledge: Knowledge is that which external authorities and experts give. The authorities and experts "know" and (selectively) share information with non-experts. Knowledge is concrete, and therefore easily documented and reproducible. It is dualistic--right or wrong, good or bad, true or false--and therefore, indisputable (there is only one 'right' answer). Learning is by listening and thereby requires both recipients of and generators of knowledge. Learners see themselves as capable of receiving, even reproducing, knowledge from the external authorities, but don't recognize they are capable of creating knowledge.

Subjective knowledge: In this perspective, truth and knowledge are conceived of as personally experienced and subjectively known or intuited. The dualistic nature of knowledge may be maintained, but the locus of authority, and hence "expertise," shifts from external only to internal as well, and therefore signals a move from passive reception to basic action and the development of voice. The knower is not reliant on powerful authorities for truth and knowledge--knowledge is grounded in first hand experience (Belenky et al. 1997, 60). In a society that emphasizes rationality and science, there are costs with a subjectivist epistemology--this form of knowing is derided as myth and "old wives tales," or at best, "mere common sense."

The idea of subjective knowing can be considered at the cultural level as well. In the literature, subjectivist knowledge is often discussed as part of local knowledge systems, the study of which have been associated primarily with non-Western, indigenous cultures where subjective knowing, intuitive processes, and experiential knowledge generation are held in greater esteem, indeed are knowing (Patel 1996). Where local cultures have been subordinated by dominant (usually Western, Euro-centric), colonial culture, which emphasizes rationalism and scientific thought, so too has the local accumulated knowledge, in historical but also present times (Berlin 1992; Irwin 1995).

Procedural (reasoned) knowledge: Reason and critical thought are not exclusive to scientific knowledge generation; in procedural knowledge, the inner authority is active and critical. In this form of knowledge, a distinction is drawn between opinions, intuitions, feelings and reasoned knowledge. Authorities, while knowledgeable, are not the dominant source of knowledge; careful observation and analysis, and the application of reasoning, on the part of the knower also results in knowledge. There is recognition of the possibility of different perspectives--of different and equally correct ways of looking at problems.

Constructed (relational) knowledge: This perspective views knowledge as entirely contextual, and learners are knowers, constructing knowledge, both subjectively and objectively (procedurally), with both equally valued. As Belenky et al (1997: 134) note, this transformation involves "the weaving together of strands of rational and emotive thought, and of integrating objective and subjective knowing." The knower is an intimate part of the known, and more importantly, recognizes that he or she is "situated." Either--or thinking is not present; answers depend on the context in which questions are asked, and actions depend upon the context in which they are needed.

I came to further understand knowledge and knowledge generation during a recent research project in which I studied a community's sense of place in light of a recent environmental contamination (Dakin 2002). Part of the study involved a set of in-depth, semi-structured interviews ranging from two to four hours in duration, with 24 citizens of Walkerton, Ontario, carried out mainly in 2001. The following instances are based on my own reflections on both the process and content of these interviews, which explored participants' feelings about, attitudes toward and attachments to their community, following the contamination of their water supply in May 2000. These interviews often evolved, unintentionally, into discussions, into narrative "story-telling," and began to take on a purpose beyond data collection for an academic study of sense of place and place attachment.

The people of Walkerton were, for the most part, very willing to engage in these discussions, excited by the opportunity to share their views, and even appeared grateful for the chance to do so. This struck me immediately as significant and compelling, primarily because it was very much at odds with warnings from others (mostly other academic researchers) about "the ethics" of asking questions of traumatized people--after all, they had been "hounded" by the media for a long time during the crisis. But, the interview process, in my view, was successful on several accounts, and upon reflection, this should not have been surprising.

It was not that the participants provided any new information about the enteric bacteriological processes at work in their own gastrointestinal systems during that fateful May 2000--in fact, they were still searching for more "information" themselves. It was not that they had any more detailed or particularly insightful perspectives on the local and provincial politics that contributed to what had happened to them--indeed they were still grappling with the complex, taken-for-granted acceptance of and apparently misguided belief in the governance of their community and province. The research process I was engaging them in was different from the question-answer episodes they had earlier experienced. As one participant noted: "Until now, no one asked us to tell our stories, to say how we feel or have changed, only asked us who to blame ..."

What was so compelling for me as a researcher and what they did seem to do in the interview process, was to reveal their very personal stories, feelings and emotions, their fears and lingering questions surrounding the contamination of their water supply--their "environmental life-blood" according to one person--with that deadly strain of e-coli. In so doing, they seemed to be working through the events and their memories of them, trying to make sense of and understand what had happened; indeed, they were participating in constructing knowledge about this major event in their lives, based on their own and shared experiences, and on information from others. As such, the process was generative. Participants were trying to integrate rationally-derived knowledge, received knowledge, and their own subjective knowledge; seemingly engaging in Belenky et al's fifth 'type' of knowledge--relational knowledge (Belenky et al, 1997). More than just the means to an end, more than a method for me to collect data, this generative process was transformative for the participants--admittedly "refreshing" to some, and almost "therapeutic" to others. Conceiving of an interview process for research purposes as either "participation" or "healing" is not generally accepted. In my view, it should be.

While it is not generally accepted, at least not in our dominant culture, such "participation-as-healing" is akin to First Nation's use of the "healing circle" to assist victims, communities and even the "accused" themselves, recover after traumatic experiences, societal transgressions, or criminal offences. A shared, communal effort to support and reintegrate the offender into the community, rather than an adversarial procedure to find guilt and expel or punish, the "healing circle" is as much a therapeutic intervention as it is a judicial process (Monture-Okanee 1995; Grogan 1999).

Participation: Beyond the Ladder

Fischer (2000) has suggested that participation can be defined as 1) deliberation on issues affecting one's own life, and 2) facilitation of learning--a process of challenging learners with ways of interpreting their experience and presenting them with "ideas and behaviours that cause them to examine critically their values, ways of acting and the assumptions by which they live." (Fischer 2000: 185). Participation as either deliberation or learning opens up the decision process not only to a range of new perspectives and the additional information and understanding they provide, but also to "another kind of rationality" (Fischer 2000: 148). This post-positivist rationality involves understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of problems, not only their technical and scientific aspects. Unfortunately, such rationality is often dismissed as a NIMBY reaction because of the powerful role techno-experts play in our culture (Fischer 2000). While attention to power in public participation has been discussed for some time (e.g. Arnstein 1969), the specifics of power sharing in relation to knowledge have received less attention. It requires a significant divestment of power--from current 'experts' and from political authorities, most notably--to accept sociocultural knowledge as legitimate, involving the holders of such knowledge (citizens) in decision making throughout management and planning processes, and integrating such knowledge on equal footing with more prestigious techno-scientific knowledge. It also implies empowerment of previously marginalized voices, which itself necessitates capacity building and the requisite resource investments to do so.