Claire Waterton

This paper sets out some observations on the making, and use, of contemporary classifications of nature in the context of a simultaneous and on-going 'making' of Europe. It looks in particular at two classifications, one of British vegetation communities and the other of European 'biotopes' (a concept that closely relates to natural or semi-natural 'habitats') - respectively, the UK National Vegetation Classification (NVC) and the EU CORINE Biotopes Classification. It investigates aspects of the relationship between these two classifications which has come about through their use in a European conservation policy. The CORINE Biotopes classification, in particular, represents a new ordering of nature in a very active sense: it is a good example of a 'working archive', and is intimately tied into policy decisions at many levels in Europe. The paper addresses questions as to how contemporary classifications are being made and used, and whether certain tacit understandings and conceptual frameworks 'built in' to them reflect back upon the world at a later stage. It argues that these classifications do not always simply reflect the assumptions and understandings built into them: once in the policy domain, they are not as 'reversible' as that. Their categories quickly become unstable, mutating and interacting in sometimes unpredictable ways. The two classifications, through their relationship with policy, have a jointly evolving history. The continual renewal of meaning attached to classes within these classifications appears to reflect outwards rather than inwards - in chorus with the broader social and political context, rather than reflecting the condition of their making. In their evolving forms, they illustrate very well the complex nature of the dynamic between unity and diversity, centre and periphery, that lies at the heart of the European Union.

There is an urgent need for transformational change in agriculture to address current and future issues caused by climate change, biodiversity loss and socio-ecological disruption. But change is slow to come and is hindered by a lack of transdisciplinary evidence on potential approaches which take a systems approach. The research described here was co-developed with the Pasture Fed Livestock Association in the UK to objectively evidence their practices. These include producing pasture-based meat from livestock fed on pasture and pasture-based forages alone. This approach sits alongside wider aims of fitting their practices with the ecological conditions on each individual farm to facilitate optimal production and working collaboratively through a forum for sharing knowledge. The research provides strong indications that the PFLA approach to livestock production is resilient and viable, as well as contributing to wider public goods delivery, despite variability within and between far...

Women scientists have historically been subject to direct and indirect discrimination. This opinion piece argues for a history of freshwater science that recognises the scientific achievements of women. It suggests that lack of opportunity for women scientists in the 20th century is typified by the stereotype that women were naturally predisposed to non-intellectual pursuits and, therefore, ill fitted to science. Freshwater science in Britain possibly provided a distinctive space for women in science, in spite of widespread lack of opportunity. Over 20 women scientists were working in one institution in the inter-war period, and during and immediately after the Second World War. Yet, outside of that specific context, their work is barely known. We give examples of these women and their work and argue that the historical invisibility of women in aquatic sciences needs to be more thoroughly addressed, so as to understand the work of women scientists as having historical, social, as we...

The “circular economy” is an increasingly influential concept linking economic and environmental policy to enable sustainable use of resources. A crucial although often overlooked element of this concept is a circular nutrient economy, which is an economy that achieves the minimization of nutrient losses during the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food and other products, as well as the comprehensive recovery of nutrients from organic residuals at each of these stages for reuse in agricultural production. There are multiple interconnecting barriers to transitioning from the current linear economic system to a more circular one, requiring strongly directional government policy. This paper uses interpretive policy analysis to review six UK government strategies to assess their strengths and weaknesses in embracing nutrient circularisation. Our analysis highlights the acute underrepresentation of the circular nutrient economy concept in these strategies as well ...

Conventional modes of environmental governance, which typically exclude those stake-holders that are most directly linked to the specific place, frequently fail to have the desired impact. Using the example of lake water management in Loweswater, a small ham-let within the English Lake District, we consider the ways in which new “collectives ” for local, bottom-up governance of water bodies can reframe problems in ways which both bind lay and professional people to place, and also recast the meaning of “solutions ” in thought-provoking ways. This Perspective is part of the Public Engagement in Science Series.

Involving the public in environmental management is high on the political agenda. This project has explored how such involvement might be achieved in the Loweswater catchment in Cumbria.The research was designed to create and support a new process to enable residents, land owners, institutions and scientists to work together to make decisions that affect the water quality of the lake.

'Projects in which scientists or clinicians in a particular institutional role may be seen as stakeholders in some difficult policy or technical issue, typically involving conflict with others'. ... Social scientists' role to identify and render explicit implicit assumptions and meanings, making ...

The narrative of the Anthropocene is shaping environmental debates as well as discussions within the environmental sciences. According to this narrative, humankind is facing its greatest challenge ever. This chapter discusses the current meanings of the concept of The Anthropocene in a critical but constructive manner. Approaching the Anthropocene as a multi-layered narrative, it discusses the promises and risks of adopting this concept and of making it central for understanding current global environmental challenges. We find that the narrative provides interesting scope for thinking sociologically about environmental challenges, but at the same time it involves some risks, which makes it important to reflect upon the conceptual usage of Anthropocene.

In the early to mid-twentieth century, women had limited opportunities to develop and practice as scientists and, when they did, were often marked out: regarded as odd or remarkable because they were women with scientific commitment, in contrast to their male counterparts. Opportunities for women in freshwater science arose in Britain in interconnected institutions centred on the Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) founded in 1929. Several women scientists, pioneers in their fields, were nurtured by the FBA, such as the early freshwater researchers Penelope Jenkin, Marie Rosenberg and Winifred Frost, the two latter being the FBA's first professional women naturalists. Several universities, such as Queen Mary College, University of London, gave opportunities to women freshwater scientists and had direct links to the FBA. Opportunities also arose for women scientists in British colonies. Other researchers who achieved distinction in their field were also products of the FBA an...

This collection explores the relations between policy and care drawing on two specific sources of inspiration – that of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and that of Critical Policy Studies. It takes as its starting point a tension within and between the anticipated features of policy and those of care. Policy is often expected to provide general statements, protocols and directives, measurable outcomes, targets and indicators in order to guide and control. But policy – no less than care – is also a set of open-ended practices; policy is performed and re-performed in particular sites and settings and by particular actors, and so it is also a specific kind of ongoing and distributed ‘doing’. It is not simply a generalised dictate. Characteristics of care, similarly, hold opposing dynamics in play. As well as configuring care as responsive, hesitant, situated and experimental practice, recent feminist research in STS has opened up questions about the non-innocence of care. Care has...

Indeterminate Bodies organizes a number of theoretical and empirical studies around the concept and actuality of indeterminacy, as it relates to body and society. Located within the struggle to apprehend different categories of ‘body’ in the volatile flows of late-capital, indeterminacy is considered through such multiple incarnations as economy, contingency, inheritance, question, force, uncertainty, materiality and affective resistance to determination. While indeterminacy is often positioned as the ‘trouble’ or friction in subject/object knowledge-formation (framed as ontological or empirical challenge), it also engenders affects such that some subjects are both in and out of recognition. Questions of indeterminacy overlap with work on imperceptibility, giving rise to interlocked questions about the modes of representation, categorization, inclusion, exclusion and sensibility in the production of bodies. We address the hesitancies, difficulties and necessities of working with and...

Waterton, Claire and Wynne, Brian (1996) Building the European Union: science and the cultural dimensions of environmental policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 3 (3). pp. 421-440. ISSN (printed): 1350-1763. ISSN (electronic): 1466-4429. ... Full text not available from this ...

'Projects in which scientists or clinicians in a particular institutional role may be seen as stakeholders in some difficult policy or technical issue, typically involving conflict with others'. ... Social scientists' role to identify and render explicit implicit assumptions and meanings, making ...