Alex Franklin

Coventry University | CU · Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

Everyday practices such as training horses may considerably affect interspecies interaction and care within horse–human relationships. In this chapter, we explore the role of equine agency in human performances of expertise in the context of ‘Natural Horsemanship’. Using commercially available horse training videos as research material, we analyse...

In the chapters presented in this book, we have explored interspecies care practices and relationships in different contexts of equine spaces: performances of expertise at horse livery yards and in commercial horse training videos, virtual–real relational networks of police horses in urban imaginaries, response-abilities at horse rescue centres as...

In horse–human relationships, caring well is intertwined with mutual knowing and becoming. For horses residing at rescue yards, this implies an active process of learning to know the horses as individuals and as agents. In this chapter, we explore this process, using interviews at horse rescue yards in the UK as research material. We focus on the s...

On social media, interspecies care is performed in online spaces, creating networks that bring together physical as well as virtual encounters between humans and animals. One such context is the Facebook page of the mounted police of Helsinki (HMP), the focus of this chapter. HMP is one of the many mounted police units around the world with a prese...

Encounters and relationships between humans and horses take place and develop within everyday practices of care. This book focuses on the spaces and practices of caring for horses, investigated through a series of case studies set to highlight different cultural contexts of horse–human relationships. Situated within recent discussions in animal and...

In the everyday practice of interspecies care, human–animal narration and verbalisation can play a central role in interpreting the agencies of horses and communicating them to other humans. In this chapter, we explore the ways in which interspecies care is enacted, interpreted, and mediated within horse–human relational networks through the use of...

The recently emerged spaces of horse retirement yards aim to provide ageing horses a chance for a good retirement. In these particular equine spaces, animal ageing is situationally experienced, managed, and interpreted within horse–human relational networks. In this chapter, we explore the construction of the category of animal retirement and its u...

The challenge of managing animal death is part of the everyday care practices of horse retirement yards. In this chapter, we explore the ways in which equine death is accommodated as part of the horse–human relationship and how euthanasia becomes a form of interspecies care. Drawing on interviews with managers of horse retirement yards in the UK, w...

In this paper we discuss the intertwining of care with learning to know and become with the other in interspecies relationships. Drawing on interviews at horse rescue yards (England), we ask: How does an animal come to be known? What does it mean to care with an animal well? How does animal agency shape the practicing of response-able care? Caring...

The demand for alternative methods of providing informed consent is increasing, especially in research with marginalised (or illiterate) research participants. This article discusses the co-creation of a visual informed consent (VIC), in collaboration with an artist. The VIC was inspired by the experience of obtaining informed consent from a group...

The concept of ecosystem services and their valuation have been used extensively across the last 20 years as a means of demonstrating the immense value of nature to policy-makers. Assessing ecosystem services and assigning an economic value to them has been thought of as the silver bullet. They were expected to bring the breakthrough for biodiversi...

This article combines a ‘zoomed‐out’ political economic analysis of Dutch agriculture with a more ‘zoomed‐in’ empirical exploration of small new entrant farmers who are carving out space for alternative food networks and practices in the Netherlands. Developing a concept of proto‐regenerative imaginaries, we define proto‐regenerative farmers as tho...

This chapter explores the relationship between collaboration and creativity within social sustainability research. Aimed at stimulating further reflection and debate on the role of ‘co-creativity’ in enabling transformative sustainability agendas, the chapter acts also as an introduction to the entire edited collection. A key guiding question posed...

This chapter explores the relationship and use of decolonial participative approaches in environmental history. The main argument is that decolonial and participative methods are useful tools to build environmental histories that are more inclusive and communicate better with today’s society. Furthermore, it is argued that using participative and d...

Conventional political thought and practice continue to be stifled by a dilemma of choosing between the ideal imaginaries of State and/or Market solutions. Widely presupposed as the only valid possibilities in both theory and practice, this stale dilemma covers up a real multitude of actually existing alternative approaches to governance practiced...

This paper explores how dairy farmers attempt to navigate prescribed principles and fixed practices of environmental care in the context of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) and the EU Water Framework Directive. In contrast to agri-environmental schemes, farm-level compliance with NVZ regulations often involves substantial investment costs for the far...

Notions of care for humans and more-than-humans appear at the margins of the sustainability transformations debate. This paper explores the merits of an ethics of care approach to sustainability transformations. It argues that more radical, transformative change can be fostered via three mutually reinforcing dimensions: a) ethically-informed practi...

Geographical Indications (GIs) are regarded as important endogenous rural development mechanisms by the European Union. GIs have proven successful for some producers in some regions, delivering higher added value and safeguarding a product's identity and heritage through the notion of terroir. Within the context of a gradual "greening" of GIs, this...

There is a wealth of information, hype around, and research into blockchain’s ‘disruptive’ and ‘transformative’ potential concerning every industry. However, there is an absence of scholarly attention given to identifying and analyzing the political premises and consequences of blockchain projects. Through digital ethnography and participatory acti...

Critically engaging with literature on post-politics, blockchain and algorithmic governance, and drawing also on knowledge gained from undertaking a three-year empirical study, the purpose of this article is to better understand the transformative capacity of government-led blockchain projects. Analysis of a diversity of empirical material, which w...

The purpose of this discussion paper is to: 1. Provide insight into the challenges and opportunities of the Protected Food Names (PFN) scheme in Wales. 2. Introduce discussion points and future research trajectories to initiate conversations and generate debate about the ways in which Welsh PFNs could be developed post-EU-Exit. This discussion pap...

This article introduces the concept of ‘place-based civic tech’ — citizen engagement technology codesigned by local government, civil society and global volunteers. It investigates to what extent creating such a digital space for autonomous self-organization allows for the emergence of a parallel, self-determining and more place-based geography of...

The purpose of this report is to provide insight into the current status of the UK’s (United Kingdom) Protected Food Names scheme, describe key considerations for its future, and outline the main ways in which the scheme could be developed post-Brexit. The report explains what Protected Food Names (PFNs) are, why they matter and why they are import...

This paper investigates how animal aging and ill-health are managed, spaced, interpreted, and experienced within a horse–human relationship. It does so by exploring the active construction of ‘retirement’ as a legitimate category within the life course of an animal. The analysis is concentrated around the emergent spaces of horse retirement yards....

The aim of this work was to produce data that captures farmer and regulator opinions on both the current and potential future social, environmental and economic cost and opportunity of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) within Wales. The research findings reported here provide an independent evidence base to support future policy development. Notably,...

Nod y gwaith hwn oedd cynhyrchu data sy'n cyfleu ffermwr a'r rheoleiddiwr barn am y dyfodol cyfredol a phosibl chost cymdeithasol, amgylcheddol ac economaidd a chyfle Parthau Perygl Nitradau (NVZs) yng Nghymru. Mae canfyddiadau ymchwil a adroddir yma yn darparu sail tystiolaeth annibynnol i gefnogi datblygiad polisi yn y dyfodol. Yn nodedig, mae hy...

This paper explores the relationship between ‘green’ identity and community environmental practice. It focuses on the ways in which professional community development facilitators and lead members of community groups attempt to actively shape how environmental projects are locally received. Drawing principally on identity, social sustainability and...

This article provides insights into the evaluation of a government-funded action for climate change program. The UK-based program aimed to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage behavioral change through community-led environmental projects. It, thus, employed six community development facilitators, with expertise in environmental issues. These facilit...

Despite the extensive areas of under-used green and brownfield land that remain in public ownership, little academic attention has thus far been given to the role of the public sector in utilising this resource for shared forms of community food growing. Building upon recent calls for more research targeted towards the governance of social innovati...

Sustainability science is difficult to conceptualise, plan and conduct, given the broad range of epistemological commitments, methodological practices, and approaches to problem-framing taken by its constituent disciplines. This special issue is based on the idea of place as a boundary device for the sustainability sciences, in the belief that it c...

This paper explores how the human-animal relationship is used to inform the construction of expertise about how best to manage relationships with animals. It pays particular attention to how the material practices of horse training can be understood as performative of human-animal relationships, animality, and the boundary between humans and animal...

Why, despite a recent surge in the UK in “sustainable communities” policy discourse, do so many community-led sustainability initiatives remain fragmented, marginal and disconnected from local government strategies? How can community- and government-led sustainability initiatives be better integrated such that they add significantly to a denser mat...

What is an eco place? and how can planners make cities more ecologically sustainable? These questions have inspired over two decades of planning theory, practice and governance. This paper looks at the history and concepts of ecological cities thinking from urban landscape perspectives in the Western thought from two perspectives: top-down spatial...

Concern over the spread of infectious animal diseases has led to attempts to improve the biosecurity behaviour of farmers. Implicit within these behavioural change strategies are different geographies of knowledge that enact different versions of disease. Some versions are fixed whilst others attempt to live with disease by accommodating difference...

The last decade has witnessed a surge of interest in ‘sustainable communities’ within the UK. This has stimulated a plethora of research aimed at acquiring a better understanding of what ‘sustainable communities’ might look like and how they can be achieved. However, this has not been accompanied by a reflection and interrogation of the actual proc...

In China, urban rural integration is creating new challenges and opportunities for the promotion of sustainable communities. This paper draws on recent preliminary research to explore the role of “ecotourism” as conceived of and driven by the State in the delivery of sustainable communities in Anji, Zhejiang province, China. We focus on the promoti...

Socially desirable outcomes such as community cohesion, diversity and social mixing are key features of the sustainable communities discourse. However, this aspect of the sustainable communities policy agenda remains under-researched. This paper uses the case of a community food initiative (Stroudco, located in Stroud, UK) to review some of the cha...

In this paper we review the current policy approach to skills and knowledge for sustainable communities. The aspatial and target-led nature of these approaches around the attainment of fixed skill sets is discussed and then contrasted with educationalist literatures which provide an alternative pedagogical approach to learning. That is, one that pl...

This paper argues that there is a need to move beyond an abstract discussion of skills and universally applicable skills sets when considering the development of sustainable communities and, more specifically, the eco-economy. The analysis suggests that the current skills and knowledge debate needs to be more closely related to both the process of...

This article explores the links between biosecurity policy and rural differentiation. It attempts to show how biosecurity policy has been fundamentally affected by uncertainty over the rules of the game of policy-making – what Hajer has called the ‘institutional void’. In particular, the article attempts to show how this void has created a new poli...

In Britain, and Wales particularly, inclusion and equal opportunities for all became key principles guiding the work of the many partnerships that were established at the beginning of this century. A primary objective of this paper is to develop a greater understanding of the politics and processes within ‘partnership’ as a widely used governance i...

There is a considerable amount of literature on embeddedness as part of sociological theory of economic action. Cultural and structural embeddedness often work together to shape the framework of economic relations, but, in an analysis of rural solicitors, we find unevenness between cultural and structural embeddedness. There are strong traits of th...

In the current European context, ‘rural development’ is now a much over‐used and misunderstood term. Far from denoting a specific concern for the particular social and economic problems of ‘peripheral rural communities’, since the Cork Declaration of 1996, European policy making, both at central and regional levels, has more meaningfully adopted br...