Landscape Imaginaries Methodology Deliverable 5.1 TC4BE

This document explains some of the key theory and concepts underpinning the TC4BE project and specifically this exercise WP5.2 on rural imaginaries. It provides a detailed methodology and timetable for activities. Social imaginaries are the shared frameworks of meaning that influence how individuals and communities perceive and experience their social and ecological worlds, including their values, norms, and cultural practices. These imaginaries are often implicit and deeply ingrained in a society's institutions (formal and informal rules, laws and norms), influencing how people understand themselves and their relationships with others. Diverse social theorists have explored the notion of ‘imaginaries’, and their role in shaping individual subjectivities and societal change processes. Subjectivities are how individuals experience and interpret their own identities, perceptions, emotions and understandings of the world shaped by cultural, historical, social, political and personal factors. Societal change processes, including ongoing transformations, are also key in cultivating collectives and affiliations. In this project task, we are exploring diverse (e.g. local, Indigenous, migrant, farmer, worker stakeholders in the landscape and export value chains etc) imaginaries (in contexts of landscapes that are telecoupled by global agrofood systems) to co-generate better understanding of senses of and connections to place, and how these are changing, and to begin to explore desirable futures and transformative change pathways. Firstly, we use Photovoice methodology. PV is a participatory research and visual methodology that allows individuals or communities to use photography to document and represent their experiences, perspectives and narratives. Secondly, we hold an agreed number (e.g. 4 per group) of Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) to explore with landscape members, which will explore changing human-nature relations and landscapes.Thirdly, we facilitate elders’ storytelling circle to explore elders’ perspectives on changing human-nature relations. Fourthly, we conduct a set of stakeholder interviews in each landscape, using a method which draws upon Feola et al and a senses of place exercise with reflection on landscape photography.