Mobilizing transdisciplinary sustainability science in place-based communities: Evaluating saliency, legitimacy, and credibility in northern Canada

Environmental Challenges

Jennifer Fresque-Baxter¹  Slave River and Delta Partnership²  Evan Andrews²  Erin Kelly³  Kiri Staples⁴  Toddi Steelman⁵ 

[1] Corresponding author.;Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of Northwest Territories, P.O. Box 1320, Yellowknife, NT X1A 3S8, Canada;Department of Geography, Memorial University, P.O. Box 4200, St. John's, NL A1C 5S7, Canada;School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada;c/o Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of Northwest Territories, P.O. Box 1320 Yellowknife, NT X1A 3S8, Canada;

关键词: Knowledge mobilization;    Transdisciplinarity;    Sustainability science;    Credibility;    Salience;    Legitimacy;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The field of transdisciplinary sustainability science offers limited guidance on what it means to mobilize knowledge outside of conventional policy and decision-making settings. Research within this field tends to emphasize knowledge mobilization for conventional environmental policy venues and decision-makers such as state and industry actors. Place-based communities often make critical management decisions to advance sustainability and inform policy, yet the evaluation of sustainability science in these contexts is underexamined. Using a case study, community-based research approach, we explored how social processes in place-based communities shaped interpretations of sustainability science by those involved in and/or affected by research. We used core criteria for knowledge mobilization—salience, legitimacy, and credibility, as established by Cash et al. (2003) — to guide our analysis of how research knowledge was evaluated. Our analysis highlighted that specific relationships, perspectives and worldviews, and historical contexts shaped how salience, legitimacy and credibility were interpreted. We affirm that for knowledge to be effectively mobilized, it must be salient, legitimate and credible, but find that the definitions of these terms are highly dependant on the social contexts in which the research takes place. These insights are critical to future transdisciplinary research aimed at addressing complex sustainability problems impacting place-based communities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown