A failing science: Understanding private landowners in the forestry milieu

Abstract

This thesis contributes towards science studies in the forestry milieu, a topic little investigated. In particular, it directs attention to the paucity of theoretical and critical discourse amongst the private landowner research community. While conducting research into private forest landowners, significant difficulties were noted within the forestry milieu over understanding complex socio-material systems. Consequently, an assertion was made that there exists a single research rationality that has epistemic (knowledge) and normative (belief) characteristics which restrict how landowners can be known. To assess the assertion, thirty-two research reports were analysed from within the landowner literature using insights from epistemology (theory of knowledge) and critical realism (philosophy on the nature of reality). The analysis was conducted through a general assessment of core epistemic and normative criteria across all cases, as well as of a single case showing how the normative and epistemic inter-relate. It was found that one knowledge framework dominates. As a generalisation, it lacks conceptual sophistication and is largely a-theoretical, emphasising data collection by questionnaire and data analysis by statistics. The dominant knowledge framework proves to be objectivist, determinist, dualist, positivist and foundationalist. It is being informed by a normative approach that promotes managerialism to the exclusion of any other relational system regarding people and forests. Although the knowledge framework appears rational, the lack of critique and diversity in ways of building knowledge both internal to it and external to it across the research community, suggests the science produced in the research community that studies landowners is irrational. This thesis may encourage critical dialogue alongside growing the potential for diverse theorisations and methodological care in research. Show more