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Culture as a means to contextualize policy

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Abstract

Community-engaged decision-making and management mark a change in philosophy and practice of shared-resource governance. Moving from national to local scales of agency coordination and public engagement requires equivalent change in the scale of useful social science data. Upon recognizing landowners and resource users as allies in policy implementation, success relies on how well diverse groups can understand one another and work together. Unfortunately, managers often have a fragmented understanding of the interests, voices, and lives of the public they serve. We outline an early scoping means for engaging and organizing local voices to prepare decision-making teams. To provide a foundation for decentralized water resource planning, we used a cultural studies lens to conduct and analyze 313 in-depth stakeholder interviews on the Yellowstone River. This essay chronicles this approach and reflects benefits and challenges, and why it may appeal to other decentralized planning efforts.

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Notes

  1. Montana Council of Trout Unlimited, et al. v. US Army Corps of Engineers, et al. Vol. 76, p. 3199, United States District Court, MT (2000).

  2. YRCI direct costs were $114,000.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the people of Yellowstone River, the Yellowstone River Conservation District Council, the local Conservation District Administrators who helped recruit participants, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the piloting work of Dr. Michael Vickery and students of Alma College. We also thank our inventory team assistants: Amanda Skinner, Jolene Burdge, Amber Gamsby, Nancy Heald, Beth Oswald, John Weikel and Beth Quiroz. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under award # EPS-0904155.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sustainability Solutions Initiative, The Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, University of Maine, 5784 York Complex #4, Room 211, Orono, ME, 04469-5784, USA

    Damon M. Hall

  2. Department of Sociology, Political Science, Native American Studies and Environmental Studies, Montana State University-Billings, 1500 University Drive, Billings, MT, 59101, USA

    Susan J. Gilbertz

  3. Communication Studies, Tarleton State University, 411 Davis Hall, Stephenville, TX, 76401, USA

    Cristi C. Horton

  4. Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University, 214C Heep Laboratory Bldg., College Station, TX, USA

    Tarla Rai Peterson

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  1. Damon M. Hall
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  2. Susan J. Gilbertz
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  3. Cristi C. Horton
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  4. Tarla Rai Peterson
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Correspondence to Damon M. Hall.

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Hall, D.M., Gilbertz, S.J., Horton, C.C. et al. Culture as a means to contextualize policy. J Environ Stud Sci 2, 222–233 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-012-0077-9

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