Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

34 • Ravi Prabhu, Cynthia McDougall and Robert Fisher
increases in connectivity, resulting in the emergence of new ideas, forms of
organisation and actions.
Social learning. The third and final process that we explore in phase 2 is
social learning. In many ways, this process—or phenomenon—lies at the
very heart of an adaptive collaborative management approach. It crosscuts
and links the collaborative and the adaptive aspects of the approach and,
more importantly, enables innovation and continuous reconstruction of
forest plans, relationships, knowledge and worldviews. It embodies the
reflexivity, or critical reflection, that social theorists such as Giddens (1984)
and Archer (1996) highlight as essential to transforming structure, agency
and ultimately social systems. We draw on several sources (Maarleveld and
Dangbegnon 1999; Mutimukuru et al. 2001; Buck et al. 2001) and our own
research experience to define social learning as a multifaceted process in
which
‘multiple stakeholders bring together their different knowledge,
experiences, perspectives, values and capacities
for a process of communication and deliberation (or critical reflection/
analysis)
as a means of jointly understanding and creating change/solutions
regarding shared issues/problems’ (McDougall et al. 2002: 28).
Before we explore the theoretical foundations of social learning, we flag a
few important dimensions suggested by this definition. First, the emphasis
on social learning in an ACM approach points to the significance of the
learning that takes place not only by individuals but also by groups. Second,
social learning often involves political or power-related processes, including
conflict management, within the group (and possibly between the learning
group and outside groups) because power relations and related struggles are
a major aspect of natural resource management (McDougall et al. 2002).
Finally, we reiterate that social learning in an ACM approach includes both
reflexive and anticipatory learning—in other words, learning from the past
as well as considering future scenarios. As discussed earlier in this chapter,
‘feedforward’ includes the critical process of envisioning an ideal, desired
future, as well as anticipation of future challenges and uncertainties.
Building on those points, we now turn to the nature of learning in an ACM
approach from a learning theory perspective. Drawing from McDougall
et al. (2002), we note that the concept of learning is usually associated
with the accumulation of knowledge by an individual, as occurs in a
training or classroom context. In describing learning theory approaches