Severine Van Bommel | The University of Queensland, Australia (original) (raw)

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Papers by Severine Van Bommel

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2022

Australia has managed well through the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to many other developed nation... more Australia has managed well through the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to many other developed nations. Through its first and second waves it was relatively successful in terms of control of outbreaks. Nevertheless, like everywhere, the shock to national systems has been profound, and adjustment remains complex and volatile. Food is a critical human need, and the food industry is recognised as a vital economic sector. We present an examination of some of the adaptive responses of Australia's food systems during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, from January 2020 to October 2020, with a focus on three case studies (seafood exports, consumer behaviour and food sector employment). These case studies provide observations of specific stresses experienced, as well as insights into the adaptation strategies carried out by various actors within the nation's food systems. The shock was experienced differently in different parts of given food systems, and the opportunities for ad...

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 2021

PurposeThe Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) intends to promote responsible forestry through its c... more PurposeThe Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) intends to promote responsible forestry through its certification scheme. The primary engine that drives this promotion is auditing. Audits serve a dual purpose: they make forest managers accountable for their claim of meeting the FSC standard, and they make the actions of auditors and auditee account-able, or able to be put into an account. The latter of these is rarely investigated, despite it being crucial to understanding how FSC audits are done.Design/methodology/approachThis article examines FSC forest certification audits as practices where the FSC standards gain meaning. In-depth analysis of these practices enables insight into how different values related to forest certification and auditing are articulated and negotiated in practice, characterizing particular modes of auditing. In this paper, the authors examine the practices of FSC forest management auditors in multi-day audits in Africa and in Spain. Their materials were analyz...

Parasitology, 2020

Weather conditions can impact infectious disease transmission, causing mortalities in humans, wil... more Weather conditions can impact infectious disease transmission, causing mortalities in humans, wild and domestic animals. Although rainfall in dry tropical regions is highly variable over the year, rainfall is thought to play an important role in the transmission of tick-borne diseases. Whether variation in rainfall affects disease-induced mortalities, is, however, poorly understood. Here, we use long-term data on monthly rainfall and Boran cattle mortality (1998–2017) to investigate associations between within-year variation in rainfall and cattle mortalities due to East Coast fever (ECF), anaplasmosis and babesiosis in Laikipia, Kenya, using ARIMAX modelling. Results show a negative correlation between monthly rainfall and cattle mortality for ECF and anaplasmosis, with a lag effect of 2 and 6 months, respectively. There was no association between babesiosis-induced mortalities and monthly rainfall. The results of this study suggest that control of the tick-borne diseases ECF and a...

Journalism, 2020

The news media in general, and newspapers in particular, are supposed to provide a forum for publ... more The news media in general, and newspapers in particular, are supposed to provide a forum for public debate. These expectations of news media take on a heightened relevance in the case of wicked problems precisely because of the irreducible complexity, the inherent tensions, and the multiplicity of stakeholders and conflicting interests involved in such issues. Both their material complexity and lack of consensus make wicked problems difficult to address. This study uses British newspaper coverage of the H5N1 avian influenza outbreak (2003–2008) to determine if under near ideal conditions, newspaper coverage in the UK is compatible with the expectation that newspapers provide a forum that supports constructive societal debate of a complex, wicked problem. We chose to work with avian influenza because it was extensively covered, evidence rich, and not captive to clear partisan constructions. Our frame analysis examined 254 relevant newspaper articles published in seven national circul...

Security Dialogue, 2019

The Nasa indigenous group’s Guardia Indígena, whose primary goal is to protect indigenous people ... more The Nasa indigenous group’s Guardia Indígena, whose primary goal is to protect indigenous people and their territories from all types of armed groups, is a nonviolent self-protection organization in Northern Cauca, Colombia. On 5 November 2014, while peace talks were ongoing between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government, two Guardia Indígena members were shot dead by FARC guerrillas. Without guns or physical violence, indigenous guards captured seven guerrillas responsible for the crime, and, four days later, indigenous organizations held a trial and sentenced the rebels to imprisonment. This article describes those events and investigates how the unarmed guards managed to capture the guerrillas and bring them to trial. The self-organization concept is used to gain insights into the mechanisms and strategies deployed. The mechanisms of the Guardia Indígena include constructing and applying specific social norms and values, developing a common...

The Journal of Development Studies, 2019

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2018

Women's Studies International Forum, 2019

NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2018

Sustainability, 2018

Online collaboration to deal with (global) environmental and public health problems continues to ... more Online collaboration to deal with (global) environmental and public health problems continues to grow as the quality of technology for communication improves. In these collaborations, trust is seen as important for sustainable collaborations and organizations. However, face-to-face communication, which is often lacking in these contexts, is seen as a pre-requisite for trust development. Therefore, this paper aims to explore empirically which factors influence the emergence of trust in the early stages of online collaboration. Using the relevant literature, we conducted a series of interviews around projects in the field of public health and the environment on the interface between science and practice. The results show that trust does develop between participants. This trust is strongly influenced by perceived ability and integrity, fostered by reputation, third-party perceptions, and project structure. In these contexts, these types of trust facilitate collaboration but are also in...

Outlook on Agriculture, 2016

Barriers to climate change adaptation might not lie so much in ‘gaps’ in scientific or technical ... more Barriers to climate change adaptation might not lie so much in ‘gaps’ in scientific or technical understandings but rather in the complexities of social, institutional and cultural transitions in climate change governance. Effective responses to complex environmental issues seem to require ‘co-learning for systemic governance transformations’. However, this process remains poorly understood. This article analyses the performance and orchestration of governance learning for systemic transformation in practice, drawing on examples from the international climate change adaptation and water governance (CADWAGO) project. We show that in these examples the interplay of ‘separating’ and ‘connecting’ is central to transforming governance in the European water management landscape. The article concludes that an orientation to boundary work and co-production of knowledge contributes to scientific narratives that can inspire meaningful connective action and move complex socioecological systems...

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2016

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2022

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 2021

Parasitology, 2020

Journalism, 2020

Security Dialogue, 2019

The Journal of Development Studies, 2019

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2018

Women's Studies International Forum, 2019

NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2018

Sustainability, 2018

Outlook on Agriculture, 2016

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2016

Problems such as deforestation, biodiversity loss and illegal logging have provoked various polic... more Problems such as deforestation, biodiversity loss and illegal logging have provoked various policy responses that are often referred to as forest and nature governance. In its broadest interpretation, governance is about the many ways in which public and private actors from the state, market and/or civil society govern public issues at multiple scales. Examples range from the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity to national forest programmes.
In studies of forest and nature governance the dominant approaches are rational choice and neo-institutionalism. This book takes another perspective. Departing from ‘practice theory’, and building upon scholars like Giddens, Bourdieu, Reckwitz, Schatzki and Callon, it seeks to move beyond established understandings of institutions, actors, and knowledge. In so doing, the book not only presents an innovative conceptual and methodological framework for a practice based approach, but also rich case studies and ethnographies. Examples are participatory forest management in the tropics, REDD policy at global level, European water policy, forest certification and the construction of global biodiversity databases.
Taking social practices as the key unit of analysis, this book describes how different practitioners, ranging from local forest managers on the ground to policy makers at the global level, work with trees, forests, biodiversity, wildlife, and so on, and act upon forest policies, environmental discourses, codes of conduct, or scientific insights. It is also about how communities, NGOs, stakeholders, and citizens get involved in forest and nature governance.

This book aims at both academics and professionals in the field of forest-people interfaces. It t... more This book aims at both academics and professionals in the field of forest-people interfaces. It takes the reader on a journey through four major themes that have emerged since the initiation of 'social forestry' in the 1970s: non-timber forest products and agroforestry; community-based natural resource management; biocultural diversity; and forest governance. In so doing, the books offers a comprehensive and current review on social issues related to forests that other, more specialized publications, lack. It is also theory-rich, offering both mainstream and critical perspectives, and presents up-to-date empirical materials. Reviewing these four major research themes, the main conclusion of the book is that naïve optimism associated with forest-people interfaces should be tempered. The chapters show that economic development, political empowerment and environmental aims are not easily integrated. Hence local landscapes and communities are not as 'makeable' as is often assumed. Events that take place on other scales might intervene; local communities might not implement policies locally; and governance practices might empower governments more than communities. This all shows that we should go beyond community-based ideas and ideals, and look at practices on the ground.

Policy Analysis and Evaluation in the Netherlands: Institutionalization and Performance, van Nispen, F. and Scholten, P. (eds.), 2014

A practice based approach is new to studies of forest and nature governance and fairly new to gov... more A practice based approach is new to studies of forest and nature governance and fairly new to governance studies in general. In this chapter, we outline the promise of such an approach for such studies. The chapter is in two parts. Firstly, a number of conclusions are drawn from the preceding individual chapters. They relate to: (1) the types of forest and nature governance practices that can be empirically distinguished; (2) the way the sensitising concepts of logic of practice, situated agency, and performativity have been used to move beyond mainstream governance approaches; and (3) the specific characteristics of a practice based approach to forest and nature governance. The second part of the chapter discusses the academic and societal value of the practice based approach as offered in this book, firstly by comparing this approach to an interpretative approach in governance studies and addressing similarities and differences, and then by discussing whether the practice based approach can contribute to policy making and steering social change. We conclude that a practice based approach can convincingly address some points that mainstream accounts of governance cannot, but only if certain long-held convictions about what governance really is are abandoned.

Forest and nature governance’ is a field that has recently emerged from forestry sciences. It ana... more Forest and nature governance’ is a field that has recently emerged from forestry sciences. It analyses the governance of a diverse set of issues, including deforestation, biodiversity loss and illegal logging, producing insights useful for science and policy. Its main theoretical base consists of two mainstream social theories: rational choice and neo-institutionalism. However, since these models rest upon problematic conceptualisations of ‘the social’, this chapter proposes a practice based approach, which offers a comprehensive understanding of the social dynamics related to trees, forests and biodiversity. It goes beyond some of the old dualisms in social theory, such as subject and object, and agency and structure. Three sensitising concepts—situated agency, logic of practice and performativity—will be introduced. In addition, the chapter identifies a number of methodological guidelines for the practice based approach, based on a short review of the practice literature. These concepts and guidelines not only define the practice based approach, but also bind together the individual chapters. Finally, this chapter introduces the book’s contents.

Taking an interpretive perspective, this chapter argues that practice research has a narrative ch... more Taking an interpretive perspective, this chapter argues that practice research has a narrative character in the sense that it is a speech act that retrospectively verbalises something (namely practices) that did not exist previously, and that is written from the (unique) perspective of its author. Although the narrative turn in research methodology is gaining significant scholarly attention, little is known about how scientific narratives are created by researchers and how researchers can be held accountable for them. We present two autoethnographies, to obtain insight into our own practice as scientific narrators. Our analysis reveals that our scientific narratives were created by interweaving an empirical plot and a theoretical plot. It also shows that researchers can be held accountable for their narratives by means of a ‘narrative contract’ with the narrative’s audience according to which the researchers must deliver (1) meaning, by means of a plot that offers a certain criticality (both empirically and conceptually) and (2) ‘truthfulness’, by resonating with the standards that their audience adheres to. We conclude by discussing the implications of such a narrative turn in research methodology for the conceptualisation of practices, practice based research and practice theory.

Forest-People Interfaces: …, Jan 1, 2012

The issue of classification plays a central role in Wiersum’s work on biocultural diversity. The ... more The issue of classification plays a central role in Wiersum’s work on biocultural diversity. The design of classification systems has enabled Wiersum to classify landscapes into natural, cultural and various intermediate categories. These classification systems do not merely mirror the world, but can only be understood in the light of the social and political values and desires they highlight and seek recognition for. In this chapter we employ a performative perspective of classification by analysing the social work that classification systems do in practice: how they influence not only how the world is known, but also how it is acted upon, and how social and material relationships are remade in the process. We conclude that by performing a world that consists of various natural, cultural and mixed categories, Wiersum’s work (1) privileges local/indigenous communities to manage the nature-culture mixtures, (2) creates a nature–culture continuum to allow for coordination across the nature–human divide and (3) creates a network of scientists and practitioners from diverse disciplines who can arrive at a division of labour in the research into and management of the biological, human and cultural categories that are distinguished.

This book takes the reader on a journey through four major themes that have dominated research on... more This book takes the reader on a journey through four major themes that have dominated research on the people-forest interface since the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published its Forestry for Rural Development paper and launched its Programme on Forestry for Local Community Development in 1976. This was the prelude to the FAO VIIIth Forestry Congress entitled ‘Forestry for People’, organised two years later, which drew attention to the role of forests in meeting people’s livelihood needs. These events marked the emergence of social forestry as a new approach to forest management that aimed to increase community participation in the development and management of forest resources (Arnold, 1991; FAO, 1976; Wiersum, 1999). In the 1980s social forestry marked a shift away from an exclusive focus on industrial, timber-oriented forestry to participatory and cooperative management schemes (Colchester et al., 2003). In the same period, the Canadian forester John Bene (Bene et al., 1977) coined the term ‘agroforestry’ for the practice of integrating trees, food crops and/or animals in a combined production system compatible with the cultural practices of the local population. Bene played an important role in the establishment of the International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Nairobi in 1997 (King, 1987). This is now known as the World Agroforestry Centre and has regional offices in India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi and Mali.

This chapter investigates, theoretically as well as empirically, the way in which initiatives aim... more This chapter investigates, theoretically as well as empirically, the way in which initiatives aimed at territorial governance work out in practice. The concept of territorial governance has increasingly received attention in policy plans as well as in the policy science literature. So far, little is known about how espoused shifts towards territorial governance manifest themselves in practice. By analysing the shift in governance in the Drentsche Aa in the Netherlands, this chapter sheds light on what happens when the espoused shift to territorial governance is applied to concrete situations, in which different dilemmas and opposing forces are at play. It shows that territorial governance in the Drentsche Aa area is struggling with tensions between regional multi-actor practices and hierarchical policy practices. We conclude that shifts in governance indeed occurred in this area, but that they manifested themselves in practice as hybrids between area based hierarchy and multi actor initiatives. As such the shifts are not as straightforward and unambiguous as sometimes thought and/or aimed for in literature, but instead their manifestation in practice is complex, ambiguous and context dependent.

A reflection on some key events of 2016, written for Muskietcie, Ipso Facto "It is a Sunday after... more A reflection on some key events of 2016, written for Muskietcie, Ipso Facto "It is a Sunday afternoon in a provincial town in France. Two men meet at a cafe. One of them, Berenger, is half-drunk. Suddenly they hear a great noise. It's a rhinoceros thundering down one of the streets, stamping and snorting all the way. Not long after, there's another.