Social Science and Liberal Studies
Charles Sturt University
Bathurst NSW 2795
Email: lpalmer@csu.edu.au
Abstract
This paper reports on research undertaken at the Australian National Field Days near Orange NSW. The research sought to see how discourses about sustainability were understood by visitors to the field days. Two mechanisms were employed. The first invited visitors to define sustainability in their own terms. The second offered a range of different definitions of sustainability to see if the respondents recognised them as relevant ways of talking about sustainability. Some demographic materials were also collected. Results are interpreted in relation to the discursive responses made by respondents. The research is part of a wider attempt to understand how a foucauldian theory of discourse and subjectivity may relate to sustainable grazing adoption and its relevance for extension research.
Media Abstract
This paper reports on research undertaken at the Australian National Field Days, Orange NSW in 2001, to see how sustainability was understood by selected visitors.
Keywords
Discourse analysis, sustainability, poststructuralism, sustainable grazing systems, discourses, cultural sociology.
Introduction
This paper reports on research undertaken at the Australian National Field Days near Orange, NSW in 2001. The Field Days are an annual demonstration and sales venue for agricultural products and developments, and are the final national step in a number of agricultural competitions. For example winners of regional inventor's competitions, dog trials and sheep trials are awarded national prizes and awards. The research reported here is part of two disparate projects. The first is to try to understand why more graziers do not adopt sustainable grazing management practices despite widely held views that such developments offer environmental and profitability improvements. Various training programs (Prograze, Grazing for Profit, Holistic Resource Management), and various grazing management programs (cell grazing, rotational grazing, time based pasture management) emphasize different principles and skills to provide a repertoire of sustainable practices for graziers to draw from and apply. Media coverage is also quite common (Palmer 1997; Palmer & Quinn 1997).
The second project of which this paper is part is an investigation of poststructuralist theory as it applies to concrete settings, especially in how it might inform us how daily practices are imbricated in wider cultural knowledges and institutional forms. Specifically, in poststructuralism, links between cultural discourses and identities (called subjectivities in poststructuralism) are the mechanisms which link culture and action (like grazing [being a grazier and doing grazing], or shearing [being a shearer and doing shearing] etc.). An important dimension of poststructuralist theory is a theory of agency which articulates the part people play in their daily practices, and goes beyond much orthodox sociology which tends to be structuralist and determinist and to neglect culture. The work of poststructuralist feminists like Weedon (1987), Butler (1990, 1993) and McNay (2000) are most influential within the foucauldian tradition for the interpretation presented here.
Current research (since the field days project reported here) is investigating identity along with a range of traditional explanatory factors of adoption such as economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects. Research prior to the field days work discussed here examined discourses in a variety of rural media (Palmer & Quinn 1997). A partner in the research reported in this paper was the group of people, producers and agronomists, who made up the NSW Central Tablelands Sustainable Grazing Systems (SGS) advisory group. People from this group helped conduct the interviews, construct the survey, and discuss the results. While the national SGS program, which ran over six years is now finished, the outcomes are still being assessed (see Price 2002). The general approach pursued here is a cultural one, building on recent research in extension/adoption (Dunn et al 2000; Gray et al 2000; Phillips 2000), and investigating the relevance of a discourse perspective.
To make the framing of this research clearer, some foucauldian concepts are very briefly examined first, within the context of another area of science, then sustainable grazing in Australia.
Discourses, subject positions, power and knowledges.
A discourse, in foucauldian terms, is a way of thinking and speaking about some aspect of social life. It is both language and practice which brings into existence an object of knowledge (Barker 2000:384) such as sustainable grazing. The cluster of discourses around some aspect of social life like madness (or grazing) is a discursive field. A discourse is a particular kind of textuality or set of textual arrangements produced by an institution. It has four aspects: concrete sites (institutions); roles or subject positions; power relations between subject positions; and certain topics or themes (Danaher et al 2000). Discourses come and go, and circulate freely once established. That is, they emerge in certain periods and may disappear later, or persist as a minor way of thinking for a long time. An example of such is a discourse is the current medicalised understanding of madness or insanity (Foucault 1973). The institution of medical science took over the discursive construction of madness from earlier religious discourses as possession by demons. Possession by demons is still knowable today, available to the odd rash of Hollywood films, but is no longer seen as valid or as truth.
By formulating madness as a medical condition, or problem requiring medical treatments the modern discourse of madness does several things. It legitimises the disciplines concerned, psychology and psychiatry. The institutions of medical science (universities, research centres, hospitals) are also legitimised as the experts in knowledge surrounding madness. It could be said these institutions colonise madness. Different subject positions are dictated by the subsets of so-called mental disease, schizophrenic, bi-polar etc. but each and all of these positions have subordinate status to the psychologist/psychiatrist/therapist. So power is both constructed and employed by people who gain by the discourses, disciplines, knowledges and titles, like Dr, Professor etc. (Foucault 1980).
Power is given special importance in foucauldian approaches. Power is everywhere, not held by persons, but claimed in interaction through discourse with persons occupying complementary subject positions (Barker 2000:80). Doctors gain power in their interaction with patients. Identities (subjectivities) are performed by persons doing what is required of them (or bending the rules or denying them), that is activating their agency (McNay 2000).
Another key concept already mentioned is that of knowledge, which is closely integrated with the concept of power (and truth) (Barker 2000:63). The therapist gains their status, prestige and salary by claiming access to expert knowledges (plural) guaranteed by degrees and job positions. This knowledge is constructed as true. This is why patients listen, even reluctantly. By contrast, the expert knowledge of madness in medieval times was theological, while the Church, and the bodies of (religious) law were the institutions which promoted and maintained the discourse, along with the special set of practices undertaken by those priests who exorcised demons.
In the context of agriculture and grazing, there are many discourses surrounding farming and agriculture. The institutions of agriculture are the universities, peak bodies like MLA and statutory bodies like Rural Lands Protection Boards, and importantly, the government (both State and federal) departments of agriculture. The many disciplines within agricultural science construct refine and teach the knowledges of agriculture, and agricultural scientists both develop those knowledges and gain by being experts in them. The subject positions implied in such discourses give scientists the power to research, to write, to teach and to speak as experts. Traditionally the discourse of extension places farmers in the subject position of the receiver of expert knowledges handed on by expert agricultural scientist. A power relationship is central to how the identity/subjectivity of the scientist and the grazier is performed. The process of calling into action a subjectivity is called interpellation (Hall 1996).
If you want an argument or a good discussion then ask a group of people what sustainability means. There is no single definition of sustainability. What sustainability means is ambiguous and plural. The discourses of sustainability vary according to the intellectual commitments of those defining it. For example sustainability may be defined discursively in relation to humanism, environmentalism or feminism etc. or agricultural science. Discourses about sustainability circulate freely in our culture now that they are established as valid ways of thinking and speaking about the land and agricultural practices.
Methods
This research is not positivist. That is to say that it draws from those traditions of research in sociology and anthropology that rejects the idea that research is objective and value free. The survey was constructed around qualitative and quantitative methods with a constructivist epistemology, and employs subjectivist interpretive assumptions in the traditions of ethnography, phenomenology, and postmodernism, particularly poststructuralism. Methodologically, discourse analysis is undertaken to identify the themes, recurring ideas, or common expressions employed by the participants themselves. It is a form of textual analysis that focuses on linguistic use which is not grammar, nor function (see Bloor & Bloor 2003) but on discursive content available from the wider culture (society, westernism, modernity), and the more contextual specificities (here agriculture, environment, grazing, but also many other fields and disciplines eg nursing see Carr G 1996). Similar answers are grouped together and notice is taken of the kinds of language employed, sharing the processual approach of grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss 1998) but with a different epistemology. An overarching frame or discourse is sought, partly from each answer but also in an accumulative and aggregative process. As a pattern emerges (if it does) minor expressions and linguistics elements (eg metaphors) are subordinated to the emerging discursive framing. A series of categories are constructed from the source material somewhat like content analysis (Turner 1993:205ff), but in poststructuralist content/discourse analysis, focus is on whole language pieces or patterns, rather than words or categories. To report the analysis, either representative examples are selected, or other means of expression are employed to represent the responses given. The outcome of this process is analysed in the discussion of the first question, below.
Thousands of people from many walks of life with an interest in rural life, agriculture and agricultural products and services, attend the National Field Days each year. The sample of 85 persons were selected and self-selected by a small team of interviewers over the three days of the field days. No attempt was made to exclude any group since cultural discourses freely circulate in the culture and the extent to which interviewees offered and recognised discourses of sustainability was one of the main issues the survey sought to research. In a busy situation like the field days many people refused the opportunity to be surveyed. Anyone who agreed to be surveyed was. Approachability was left uncontrolled with no consistent markers or criteria employed. The sample size was not predetermined. No attempt was made to make the sample representative since this was not important as to the use and identification of discourses of sustainability. Men and women were interviewed, but gender was not of interest here and not recorded. Thirty (35%) were full time farmers and 55 (65%) were not. Not all data gathered in the survey are presented here. The focus in this paper is on analyses of the self-defined meanings (discourses) of sustainability, the results from two questions about sustainability, and some reflection on the demographic data with respect to these first two discursive results.
Three questions in the survey (Q1, examined below, and two others) requested responses from respondents in their own words, and were examined qualitatively. The other nine questions were examined quantitatively using the SPSS software, from which frequency tables were derived. All of the quantitatively analysed questions were cross-tabulated and significance tested using Pearson's Chi-Square to 95% certainty. No answers showed statistical significance when cross-tabbed with the others. The discussion below focuses on the discursive questions asked and analysis of the answers elicited.
Results: Discourses of sustainability
Sustainability was investigated discursively in two different ways. Firstly, each respondent was asked to say what sustainability meant to them in their own words. The responses gained were then analysed as discourses. Secondly, choices between definitions of sustainability were offered in two questions to respondents and analysed as discourses. These are examined successively below.
Self-defined sustainability (Q1)
Answers to the request to define sustainability in respondent's own words (Q1), fell into two major discursive camps, an environmentalist one (61%) and a productionist one (39%). However, both groups of responses include ways of talking relating to the issues raised in the other (opposite) group. For example, people might talk about the environment or the land within the general orientation or farming production, costs, profitability etc. Similarly, many answers within the framework of environmental concerns, talked of farming, grazing, profits, chemicals etc. So the difference between them is a matter of orientation or emphasis, a question of which frames which. In poststructuralist theory, objects of discourse are constantly constructed and reconstructed through discursive interaction.
Of the 85 interviews only 5 failed to answer Q1, with responses ranging from single word replies like 'prices', to longer more complex answers. One group of 31 (39% of the 80 who answered) can be characterised as having a 'productionist' orientation, while the other main group of 49 (61% of the 80 who answered) had what might be called an 'environmentalist' orientation. These discursive tendencies are discussed below (see Table 1).
Table 1: Self-Defined Sustainability Environmentalist and Productionist Discourses
Environmentalist Discourse |
61% |
Productionist Discourse |
39% |
Discussion
Firstly, the environment-oriented group (49 = 61%) often employed or emphasised the long-term durability/continuity/future/preservation dimensions of sustainability. Responses such as 'commitment to preserving my land', 'keep doing (sic) forever', and 'it means we should be doing in 100 years what we are doing now (if not better)'. Others mentioned future prospects in terms of children, like 'to have it (land) still there for our kids and future generations', 'care-taking land for our children', and 'that I will be able to go on all my life and leave it for the grandchildren and the future'. Many of these environmentalist responses invoke nature, the natural state of the land and natural resources. For example, 'the use of natural resources in a way that maintains the community resources for the future', and 'using resources in a way that does not damage the environment or deplete natural resources'. This seemed to be a relatively clear and strong environmentalist grouping.
Secondly, the production-oriented group (31 = 39%) gave answers like 'produce as much as we can now and do it into the future preferably at higher production levels', and 'create and generate current economic benefits without depleting our natural environment'. Also, there were replies such as 'continue operation without major corrective input', and 'using production methods that don't result in the diminution of production over time'. Others were 'survival - keep productivity levels going', and 'a constant supply of product over time', and bluntly 'sustain production'. Some answers were more implicitly productionist like the above-mentioned 'prices'. Twenty replies (25%) did not mention environmental related terms at all and could be called a strong productionist grouping. While the term productionist is used here, the replies often included economistic answers like the ‘ prices’, mentioned above. It was felt that the wider discursive framing was toward production, with the costs of production, the issues of markets, marketing, prices and demand implicit in the framing offered.
Thirdly, some responses seem relatively balanced in some way between these two groups, including the succinct 'manage resources, manage environment, continue', and 'operating any activity in a way that does not deplete natural resources'. If this issue is pressed, a number of productionist replies (11 out of 31 or 13.75%) might be said to display some environmental awareness and perhaps be called a weak productionist grouping. The answers could then be interpreted as representing three kinds of discursive tendencies (see Table 2).
Table 2: Self-Defined Sustainability Discourses (counted as three discourses)
Environmentalist Discourse |
61% |
Weak Productionist Discourse |
13.75% |
Strong Productionist Discourse |
25% |
While some researchers might see it this way, this researcher felt that a possible middle or weak case did not detract from the insight that two main discourses were at work.
Alternatively, if the weak productionist definitions of sustainability are transferred to the environmentalist grouping, on the grounds that any environmental awareness is important in relation to sustainability, then the figures become 75% and 25%, environmentalist and productionist respectively, or a 3:1 ratio (see Table 3).
Table 3: Self-defined Sustainability Discourse (with Weak Productionist Discourse counted as Environmentalist)
Environmentalist Discourse |
75% |
Productionist Discourse |
25% |
It probably does not matter too much which sorting interpretation is adopted. The general pattern in the responses seems to be in terms of environmentalist and productionist discourses. Tables 1, 2 and 3 cover the options but the wider framing seems clear. Finally, employing different theoretical assumptions, a productionist dimension in traditional farming has been identified in some rural sociology literature (see Lawrence et al 1992; Gray et al 2000; Phillips 2000) which fits with the productionist discourse identified above.
Who said (or agreed with) these things?
To finish this discussion of the self-defined responses to the first question on sustainability, some reflection is offered on the respondents who offered the information discussed above. Some demographic material was collected in the survey, relating to contact with Sustainable Grazing Systems activities, occupation, residence, grazing activity and extent.
Three aspects are examined here in relation to these issues. Firstly, what proportion of those who employed an environmentalist discourse of sustainability in the self-defined question 1 had undertaken SGS activities (would this explain the 2/3 tendency)? Secondly, how many of those who used the sustainability discourse in an environmentalist way in Q1 were full time farmers (might this explain that tendency)? Thirdly, what percentage of those using a productionist orientation to define sustainability in Q1 were full time farmers? The answers to these questions follow.
1 SGS contact
Of those who gave an environmentalist reply, only 10 (20%) had attended a SGS activity, while 39 had not. This suggests that the strength of this environmental response to Q1 is not explained by SGS contact or impact (see Table 4).
Table 4: Proportion of SGS contact among Environmentalist responses
Attended SGS activity |
No SGS activity | |
Environmentalist Discourse (49) |
10(20%) |
39 (80%) |
Discourses of SGS attendees
If we look at the 20 respondents who had attended SGS activities, 6 gave a productionist discourse (weak or strong) and 14 an environmental discourse. This suggests support for the possibility that contact with SGS activity promotes environmental sensitivity and that production might be framed within an environmentalist discourse of sustainability (see Table 5).
Table 5: Possible Influence of SGS contact on environmentalist discourse
Environmentalist Discourse |
Productionist Discourse | |
Attended SGS activity (20) |
14 (70%) |
6 (30%) |
The numbers are too small here to draw much from, however, this may indicate a direction for future research.
2 Occupation I
Of those who gave an environmentalist reply to Q1, 11 (22%) were full time farmers, and 38 (78%) were not (see Table 6).
Table 6: Influence of Occupation on Environmentalist Discourse of Sustainability
Full Time Farmers |
Not Full Time Farmers | |
Environmentalist Discourse (49) |
11 (22%) |
38 (78%) |
This data lends some support to the possibility that non-farmers or part-time farmers, not faced with the nitty-gritty of production, might be more environmentalist in their self-definition of sustainability.
If the weak productionist discourses were re-distributed to the environmentalist side of the self-defined question (1) on sustainability, then 8 were full-time farmers and 3 not. This makes 19 (32%) who were full time farmers and 41 (68%) who were not (see Table 7).
Table 7: Influence of Occupation on Environmentalist Discourse of Sustainability AND a Weak Productionist Discourse
Full Time Farmers |
Not Full Time Farmers | |
Environmentalist Discourse (60) |
19 (32%) |
41 (68%) |
This data also lends support to the interpretation that those who self-defined an environmentalist discourse of sustainability tended to be non-farmers or part-time farmers by a ratio of around two thirds to one third, or a ration of two-to-one.
3 Occupation II
Of those (20) who gave a full-blooded productionist responses to defining sustainability, 9 (45%) were full time farmers, and 11 (55%) were not. Of those (11) who gave a weak productionist response with some sign of environmental awareness, 3 were not full time farmers, and 8 were. As a single (productionist) group (both weak and strong), 17 (55%) were full time farmers and 14 (45%) were not. This suggests no strong relationship between an environmentally sensitive discourse of sustainability, and occupation, at least in terms of farmers/not farmers (see Table 8).
Table 8: Influence of Occupation on various Productionist Discourses of Sustainability
Full Time Farmers |
Not Full Time Farmers | |
Strong Productionist Discourse (20) |
9 (45%) [11%]* |
11 (55%) [14%] |
Weak Productionist Discourse (11) |
8 (73%) [10%] |
3 (27%) [4%] |
Combined Productionist Discourse (31) |
17 (55%) [21%] |
14 (45%) [18%] |
* responses expressed as a proportion of the total (80) replies received (to nearest %).
To summarise this section, self-defined productionist discursive replies (weak and strong) may seem to be explained by a slight preponderance of respondents (55%) being involved in full time farming production. On the other hand, those who gave an environmentalist response were not, mostly, full time farmers so it could be speculated that they gave environmentally aware answers because they were not involved in the nitty gritty of farming production. This could be researched further.
To be clear, there is no necessary relationship between being a full time farmer/grazier and being strongly production-minded to the extent that it prevents them also being environmentally aware or sensitive. It is clear that there are working, practising graziers who are environmentally driven yet financially responsible and profitable. We could expect that we are identifying the elements of a historically prior discourse in the productionist responses. It seems advisable to consider the current situation as one of transition. In such a context, the material discourse might be considered to underpin a production understanding or orientation to sustainability especially when traditional grazing practices ie set stocking, still prevail.
In a wider research and social context a number of other issues are raised. There is resonance here of a marxist or critical theory thesis about the emergence of ideas arising from the material conditions of a group’s circumstances in the tradition of Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology (1970). Without needing to trace this tradition and its critiques here, we can say that the materialist/idealist dichotomy is unnecessarily reductive in the light of the recent late twentieth century turn to culture in social theory. While the discursive cultural approach identified generally with Foucault and other poststructuralists being investigated in this research focuses centrally on language, the central place of both discourse and practices steers the enterprise away from a crude idealist position too. We can say, along with Game (1991) that what seems necessary and adequate is a materialist semiotics, where a dialectical and integrative view of daily practice is matched with the enabling and limiting dimensions of discourse.
In a practical context such as grazing, this means that the daily practices of grazing is cultural in both the sense of employing certain skills, habits, knowledges associated with grazing (discursive practices) and in the sense of understanding, defining and articulating those practices through historically available discourses. This account steers us firmly away from either materialist or idealist epistemologies and locates us in a sophisticated and complex cultural constructivist epistemology. More plainly we can say that both daily lived experience, habits and practices and the ideas, discourses, and ideologies we have available to us, are needed to explain and make sense of that experience.
In the research context being discussed here, we may make the following observations. To the extent that it seems possible that the daily experience of traditional grazing might incline a proportion of full-time farmers to reproduce a version of a productionist discourse we can say that the practices are framed by the discourse such that the discourse employed adequately accounts for the practices developed, and that the experiences adequately underpin the validity of the discourse employed. This allows us to expect and find a degree of fit or resonance between a productionist discourse of the kind identified in Q1 and traditional grazing practices such as set stocking.
This also allows us to expect an environmentalistic discourse to be activated by both full time farmers and non-farmers regardless of the daily practices they live out. The results of Q2 and 3 appears to demonstrate that we can hold contrary and conflicting discourses at the same time, a feature commonly borne out in extension interactions. As well, both farmers and non-farmers may employ a productionist discourse. Just as important it is imperative to see that neither group is forced by their circumstances in a determinist way to select the options outlined. It is the agency of persons in responding to the discourses available that completes the picture, Full time farmers/graziers can just as easily adopt the environmental discourses of sustainability, and if sustainable grazing becomes a mainstream agricultural form, we can expect more of them to do so. It is to the flux of discursive culture that we must look for that eventuality. What is clear is that not only must an array of sustainability discourse exist, but that farmer/graziers must be in contact with them and their associated practices, knowledges, skills and insights. That such discourses exist in the culture is insufficient, graziers must encounter them then make meaning of them in their own context.
Choosing discourses of sustainability - Q2
The second question provided some ready-made and simple definitions of sustainability and asked respondents to select from Agree/Disagree/Don’t Know.
The results are found in Table 9.
Table 9:Responses to 5 brief definitions of Sustainability
A stopping land degradation/soil problems? |
93% agreed |
B improving pasture and profitability? |
79% agreed |
C issues only of concern to greenies? |
93% disagreed |
D careful stewardship of the land? |
97% agreed |
E ensuring a future for our children? |
95% agreed |
Discussion
It should be noted that option B coins a phrase from Central Tablelands SGS promotion material and might be recognised by graziers who had undertaken some degree of SGS related training (eg Prograze). In fact, this option received the second lowest level of agreement (79%), presumably because it mentions profitability, and the SGS message that sustainable grazing can be also profitable had not been successful among this group. In the foucauldian framework SGS and its associated infrastructure became an institution that mediated and promoted the discourse of sustainability (see Price 2003).
Perhaps the clearest signal from this question is that 93% of respondents disagreed with the option that suggested sustainability was only of interest to greenies. It was expected that a small (hard core?) minority would be attracted to this option given the scapegoat nature of the greenies reference, but not as small as the response rate indicated here. It suggests that the environmentalist awareness about agriculture is well abroad, which reinforces the discursive emphasis noted in the answers to Q1 and the discursive approach adopted.
The other options in question 2 tested agreement with some other discourses about farming and grazing, ie stopping land degradation/soil problems (93% agreed), careful stewardship of the land (97% agreed), and ensuring a future for our children (95% agreed). These represent a high recognition and acceptance of these ways of thinking and feeling about the practices of farming and grazing. They harmonise, to varying degrees, with both traditional approaches and newer, environmentally sensitive ones. The most traditional discourse, about stewardship,p can easily accommodate a sustainable dimension and we have perhaps all heard expressions of this.
Discursively these options are synecdoches, and metonymically represent discourses rather than being discourses per se; we might call them discursive fragments. The high level of recognition and agreement suggests a widespread sensitivity to issues relating to sustainability, rather than uncertainty and confusion in our culture about a matter that people are unfamiliar with.
Choosing discourses of sustainability - Q3
Question 3 posed a choice between eight discourses (see Table 10) around sustainability derived from the political literature around sustainability (Huckle 1996). No single definition of sustainability exists. This is to say that no one definition or way of talking about sustainability is privileged over any other, except to say that some may predominate. Each discourse carries with it a supporting body of knowledge, each carrying 'truth' for those who see things that way. Without a single defining discourse of sustainability the variety of discourses available to people today depends on the political and cultural ‘baggage’ (knowledge, truth) brought to the question of sustainability.
Table 10: Results - Discourses of sustainability
A sustainability needs governments to maintain the stability of the economy |
84% agree |
B sustainability is only possible through personal change and personal |
78% agree |
C sustainability requires that I recognise that it is my duty to protect the |
92% agree |
D sustainability requires us to recognise the role of women in society and the |
70% agree |
E sustainability is mostly a problem created by the rich industrialised |
47% agree |
F sustainability is only possible through democratic organisations, producer |
50% agree |
G sustainability should be paid for by higher prices, environmental taxes and |
28% agree |
H sustainability needs to be achieved within free markets, preserving individual |
60% agree |
Many issues are raised here. The format of the question Agree/Disagree or Don’t Know offered the benefit of allowing respondents to consider each discourse in its own terms regardless of its relationship to the others. On the other hand it would have been nice to get respondents to choose between them, forcing a value choice, but the task of getting respondents to both listen and understand then select from eight options was clearly too great. However, bearing in mind that these statements are supposed to represent cultural discourses freely circulating in our culture then it is possible that people have degrees of agreement with different positions on the object being discursively formed, here sustainability.
From a post-structuralist perspective, a process that is more than merely selecting among choices is going on here. Each discourse offers identity (subjectivity) with the position being proposed (interpellated) affording a process of identification (Hall 1996), in response to which a person can exercise their agency in agreeing or disagreeing, and, in normal interaction (outside of research surveys), negotiate with the meanings ‘on the table’. So the research process is also part of the discursive constitution of meaning of sustainability, another site of discursive formation. Despite this discursive array people did have opinions; the Don’t Know option never got higher than 19%.
If we rank these discourses we get the following results (Table 11).
Table 11: Results - Discourses of sustainability in rank order
C green individualist discourse |
92% agreed |
A socialist discourse |
84% |
B green reformist discourse |
78% |
D feminist discourse |
70% |
H laissez faire discourse |
60% |
F democratic discourse |
50% |
E third world discourse |
47% agreed 47% disagreed |
G neo-classical discourse |
43% agreed 57% disagree |
Overall this suggests that a high degree of personal responsibility (C and B) is felt in relation to sustainability which might reflect both individualist and social responsibility sensibilities at work. Also of interest is the split of 47% agree 47% disagree around the suggestion that sustainability is a problem created in the west about which the third world can do little. The least attractive option was the neo classical suggestion that sustainability might mean higher prices, environmental taxes, and pollution licences. This fits quite well with, (as the antithesis of) the personal responsibility options B and C which registered highest, 92% and 84% respectively.
In addition there seemed to be no problem with agreeing with a number of discursive options successively. Anecdotal reports from the interviewers revealed no problem with this. Respondents seemed happy to treat each option in its own right. This fits with the practical experience of discourses circulating in the culture.
If these are the results of the two approaches to examining how, firstly, respondents self-defined, then secondly, recognised the discourses and discursive fragments offered them, what can be said about the relations between them? What fit or misfit can be seen between the results of the three questions asked about discourses of sustainability?
Relationship of Q1 to Q2
Remember that question 2 offered the choice of Agree/Disagree/Don’t Know to five short definitions of sustainability: stopping land degradation/soil problems; improving pasture and profitability; issues only of concern to greenies; careful stewardship of the land; and, ensuring a future for our children. It has already been noted that the general preponderance of responses to Question 1, toward an environmental awareness, from between 61-75% (depending how the answers are sorted) matches well with the emphatic rejection (93% disagreed) of Q2C (issues only of concern to greenies).
There is also quite a deal of fit between the responses to Q1 and Q2. Q2C (involving negation of the proposal ‘issues only of concern to greenies’) and D (stewardship) and E (children’s future) could be taken to be similar to environmentalist definitions of sustainability. This suggests that to a degree, Q1 and Q2 had similar responses given that the first required an unprompted 'cold' response and that 3 out of 5 options for Q2 were environmentally inclined and received a high degree of agreement. In fact, Q2C, D and E received 93%, 97% and 95% agreement respectively (Q2C having received 'negative' agreement).
In the light of the responses to Q1 grouping around the environmental and productionist poles, Q2A (stopping land degradation/soil problems) and B (improving pasture and profitability) could be perhaps seen as productionistic. These responses were also heavily agreed to, receiving 93% and 79% respectively. If we adopt simple averages for these two general responses, we have 95% agreement to the 3 environmentalist options and 86% to the productionist options. This is rudimentary information but it perhaps underlines the high agreement figures on answers to Q2C, D and E, which echoes the responses to Q1 with 61% environmentalist discourse (see Table 12).
Table 12: Discourse Comparisons between answers to Q1 and Q2
Q1 discourses |
Q2 Agreement/Disagreement |
Environmentalist Discourse (61%) |
C issues only of concern to greenies? (93% disagreed) |
Productionist Discourse (39%) |
Q2A (stopping land degradation/soil problems) (93%) |
The fit between responses to Q1 and Q2 is not close, and given the numbers involved not worthy of heavy interpretation. The two questions were of different design. The first is an either/or sorting process about which two main discourses are argued to exist. The second question allows co-existent answers around differing and potentially conflicting discursive fragments or synecdoches. The best that can be suggested is similar slight tendencies of direction. The relationship needs further research to bear significance.
Relationship of Q1 to Q3
Question 3 offered Agree/Disagree/Don’t Know options to 8 versions of sustainability as discussed above.
Q3A has a productionist colour to it (sustainability needs governments to maintain the stability of the economy without exhausting limited resources, like coal and gas). Q3C has an environmental aspect to it, and so perhaps has Q3D (at a stretch). The other (5) options appear not to fit the language and ideas (discourses) found in the two main groupings from the answers to Q1. The way the questions were asked are important here. Q1 responses are about how sustainability is to be defined, while Q3 options are about how sustainability is to be achieved. The design reasons for this difference are that while Q1 sought to allow the respondents freedom to activate the discourse of sustainability they wanted in that interview context, Q3 was framed in a practical way (How is sustainability to be achieved) to try to ground each respondent’s discursive agreement or disagreement in a normative or propositional mode. These differences might explain part of the relatively strong lack of fit between Q1 and Q3, and could be investigated in later research.
Table 13: Discourse Comparisons between answers to Q1 and Q3
Q1 discourses |
Q3 Agreement/Disagreement (closest discourses) |
Environmentalist Discourse (61%) |
Q3C (sustainability requires that I recognise that it is my duty to |
Productionist Discourse (39%) |
Q3A sustainability needs governments to maintain the stability |
There is little to be drawn from these results except as guidance for future research questions. The strong reading of environmentalist discourse as 75% of responses to Q1 is numerically close to the (77%) average of the agreement found with the two environmentalistic discourses offered in Q3 (see Table 13). However the strongest interpretation of the productionist interpretation (39%) is not close to the 84% agreement found with the closest discourse offered in Q3 (A - socialist discourse).
Conclusion
In a broad sense, sufficient encouragement for the proposal that looking at sustainability from the point of discourses in the poststructuralist way employed in this paper was derived to attempt further research. In a more narrow sense, the productionist and environmentalist discourses generated by the open self-defined first question is an interesting outcome that fits with sociological and cultural literature about agriculture. Some pattern of connections or ‘fit’ was also found between different ways of employing discourse in a small survey with a relatively small number of respondents.
In addition, sufficient weight for the interpretation that cultural discourses that currently circulate in Australia are influenced by the relationship those surveyed have to production, appears to warrant further research. This can be built into subsequent research, which may tell us more about the way we take up certain discourses like sustainability, and how we choose between the discourses that are available.
This paper reports on research undertaken from a poststructuralist perspective, which centres on discourses, knowledges, power, subjectivity and agency. In the research reported here the focus has been on the discourse end of these cultural processes. The research at the National Field Days did not attempt to test the questions surrounding the identity end of these processes. Pertinent questions emerge from this research for future efforts which could bear significant implications for extension research. For example, does the identity (subjectivity) of a grazier play an important part in the process of deciding to adopt or trial sustainable grazing management practices? More specifically, does a discourse like sustainable grazing, however defined, offer a grazier a chance to take up a subjectivity that leads to a change in grazing management, that is, adoption?
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