The third decennial review from the International Association for Society and Natural Resources, Opening Windows simultaneously examines the breadth and societal relevance of Society and Natural Resources (SNR) knowledge, explores emergent issues and new directions in SNR scholarship, and captures the increasing diversity of SNR research. Authors from various backgrounds—career stage, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, and global region—provide a fresh, nuanced, and critical look at the field from both researchers’ and practitioners’ perspectives. 

This reflexive book is organized around four key themes: diversity and justice, governance and power, engagement and elicitation, and relationships and place. This is not a complacent volume—chapters point to gaps in conventional scholarship and to how much work remains to be done. Power is a central focus, including the role of cultural and economic power in “participatory” approaches to natural resource management and the biases encoded into the very concepts that guide scholarly and practical work. The chapters include robust literature syntheses, conceptual models, and case studies that provide examples of best practices and recommend research directions to improve and transform natural resource social sciences. An unmistakable spirit of hope is exemplified by findings suggesting positive roles for research in the progress ahead. 

Bringing fresh perspectives on the assumptions and interests that underlie and entangle scholarship on natural resource decisionmaking and the justness of its outcomes, Opening Windows is significant for scholars, students, natural resource practitioners, managers and decision makers, and policy makers.

This book provides an overview of interdisciplinary approaches that have applied social science to research focused on issues around food, agriculture and natural resource management. The book demonstrates that those who work in rural sociology either as researchers or practitioners apply community development and participatory techniques to socio-environmental interaction. The book discusses how the evolving concept of interconnected social and ecological systems (SES) emerged, recognizing the inherent complexity, adaptive nature, and resilience of such systems. This book engages with contemporary theory, as well as new cutting-edge transdisciplinary research evidenced in case studies from three continents.

Transformative Politics of Nature highlights the most significant barriers to conservation in Canada and discusses strategies to confront and overcome them. Featuring contributions from academics as well as practitioners, the volume brings together the perspectives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts on land and wildlife conservation, in a way that honours and respects all peoples and nature.

Contributors provide insights that enhance understanding of key barriers, important actors, and strategies for shaping policy at multiple levels of government across Canada. The chapters engage academics, environmental conservation organizations, and Indigenous communities in dialogues and explorations of the politics of wildlife conservation. They address broad and interrelated themes, organized into three parts: barriers to conservation, transformation through reconciliation, and transformation through policy and governance.

Taken together, the essays demonstrate the need for increased social-political awareness of biodiversity and conservation in Canada, enhanced wildlife conservation collaborative networks, and increased scholarly attention to the principles, policies, and practices of maintaining and restoring nature for the benefit of all peoples, species, and ecologies. Transformative Politics of Nature presents a vision of profound change in the way humans relate to each other and with the natural world.

Drawing on the expertise of marine researchers from both the natural and social sciences, this book examines how we, as both scientists and societies, can return to a sustainable co-existence with the ocean and use the tools of transdisciplinarity to bring together the diverse forms of knowledge needed to achieve this important task.

The marine sciences play a vital role in producing and providing the knowledge needed for a transition towards ocean sustainability. With a multitude of actors involved in using, exploiting, and safeguarding the seas, however, this task cannot be solved by science alone. Transdisciplinary research is needed, bringing together scientists and all other actors of society to jointly co-produce the knowledge and innovations that we so urgently need. In this context, this book examines and answers key questions at the forefront of transdisciplinary marine research: How can we provide approaches that integrate marine biodiversity and social systems in an appropriate relationship? What methodologies are most suitable to engage stakeholders in participatory processes providing new knowledge and tools for co-designing solutions with balanced socio-ecological embeddedness? How do we best integrate scientific with lay and local knowledge, and how are diverse knowledges valued in engagement activities? How can we reconcile socio-economic activities and the often divergent values attached to them to provide ethical principles for fair and equitable policy decisions? The book addresses these questions by combining an array of chapters about new theoretical approaches to transdisciplinary marine research, methodological considerations, as well as case studies from the nexus of the research and practices of engagement with a variety of stakeholder groups across the globe.

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action in June 2015, governments, churches, non-profit, professional and community organizations, corporations, schools and universities, clubs and individuals have asked: “How can I/we participate in reconciliation?”

Recognizing that reconciliation is not only an ultimate goal, but a decolonizing process of journeying in ways that embody everyday acts of resistance, resurgence, and solidarity, coupled with renewed commitments to justice, dialogue, and relationship-building, Pathways of Reconciliation helps readers find their way forward.

The essays in Pathways of Reconciliation address the themes of reframing, learning and healing, researching, and living. They engage with different approaches to reconciliation (within a variety of reconciliation frameworks, either explicit or implicit) and illustrate the complexities of the reconciliation process itself. They canvass multiple and varied pathways of reconciliation, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, reflecting a diversity of approaches to the mandate given to all Canadians by the TRC with its Calls to Action.

Together the authors — academics, practitioners, students and ordinary citizens — demonstrate the importance of trying and learning from new and creative approaches to thinking about and practicing reconciliation and reflect on what they have learned from their attempts (both successful and less successful) in the process.