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

Participation viewed as a generative and potentially transformative process for citizens (and experts)--and not just as a means or method by which to collect additional information or to involve people as an end itself--is an emerging direction in environmental management. It will become especially significant if the knowledge generated is viewed as equally valuable as scientific knowledge. Likely outcomes include decreased reliance on only objective, external truth; more reflective processes; and forms of knowledge that are sufficient for, indeed geared towards, practical purposes. As examples of such changes, the role of experience and the use of story telling and narratives in environmental management have been suggested by others, usually as part of ascertaining local environmental history. Bowerbank (1997: 32) for example, suggests the use of "personal and interested" knowledge, to "not merely react to particular crises, but develop instead an ongoing process to allow people to explicitly cultivate a collective sense of place and participation in environmental decision making."

In this paper, I have questioned and critiqued the conceptions and understandings of participation, knowledge and expertise in the current paradigm of managerial ecology. Through discussion of particular events and anecdotal examples drawn from my own experience and from observations of others involved in "public processes," I hope to have demonstrated that an alternative kind of knowledge generation exists. This form of knowledge--subjective data, opinions and experiences in particular places--has typically been marginalized in the realms of public planning and environmental management. By describing these alternative types of knowledge, I hope to challenge the reader to accept as legitimate and valid, forms of knowledge that are not conventionally held in high regard by planners, managers and academics committed to managerial ecology.

(1) The historic contexts of and conceptualizations of local (traditional) and scientific (modern) knowledge have been teased out and contested in the vast literature in this area; for insightful reading see Agrawal 1995, Brush and Stabinsky 1996, Bernal 1969).

(2) Without over-emphasizing the importance of gender, but recognizing the dominance of patriarchy, it should be noted that earlier work which is held up as definitive with respect to human knowing (e.g. Perry 1970), was based on interviews with only men.

(3) Consideration of the actions of an inquiry commissioner in relation to the communities he/she interacts with, as integral to the 'success' of public process, is not new. Indeed a key implication of the Berger Inquiry in the 1970s has been attention to accessibility of communities to such processes (Berger 1977).

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Susan Dakin is an Assistant Professor in Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. Her research interests include environmental contamination and risk, and sense of place; qualitative methodology in geography and environmental management; and landscape studies. She can be reached at the University of Lethbridge, Geography Department, 4401 University Drive W, Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4; susan.dakin@uleth.ca.