Mrill Ingram

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems

This article uses two artistic case studies, Bird Yarns (a knitting collective engaging questions of climate change) and SLOW Cleanup (an artist-driven environmental remediation project) to examine the “work” art can do with respect to socioecological transformations. We consider these cases in the context of geography's recent interest in “active...

Lillian Ball’s art project WATERWASH creates a new ecological imaginary in the South Bronx. Building on a tradition of ‘maintenance art’, the work exhibits the power of soil, plants and microorganisms to clean water – in effect maintaining urban water. An overarching goal of WATERWASH is to educate local people about the metabolism of urban water,...

Organic farming, biodynamic farming, and other alternative approaches to agriculture are often described in spatial terms such as “close to,”“going back to,” and “following” nature, and correspondingly represent a production process that is ineluctably local, farmer-led, and relies on minimal external inputs, especially in terms of science and tech...

Networks have been embraced as appropriate means for environmental governance because of their potential inclusivity, flexibility, resilience, and ability to comprehend multiple values and ways of knowing. Analysis of networks, however, falls short of accounting for the emergence and persistence of these innovative and complex modes of governance,...

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), a citizen panel charged with the job of recommending to the US Secretary of Agriculture guidelines for certified organic agriculture, can be analyzed as a ‘boundary organization’. By linking organic farmers’ knowledge with peer-reviewed science, the board builds the base of organic agriculture for legiti...

The use of cover cropping, as one element in a continuous living cover approach, has the potential to protect water quality and promote soil health, but overall U.S. acreage in cover crops as well as adoption rates remain low. Research on behavioral barriers to cover crop use indicates a lack of information about locally suitable practices and cove...

There is a disconnect between ambition and achievement of the UN Agenda 2030 and associated Sustainable Development Goals that is especially apparent when it comes to ocean and coastal health. While scientific knowledge is critical to confront and resolve contradictions that reproduce unsustainable practices at the coast and to spark global societa...

Edited by leading scholars with contributions from over thirty renowned experts this is the leading Handbook on policy, processes and real world governing.'-Klaus Schubert, University of Muenster, Germany 'This is a highly valuable and timely book, which rediscovers and rethinks the relationship between policy processes, policy analysis (expertise...

Orphan spaces might be thought of as "un-places," and are distinctive in their lack of connections. They are managed, often intentionally, but not always, to be homogeneous and single purpose, via fencing, channelization, mowing, cementing, polluting, policing or regulating such that they are maintained in a simplified state, forced to a streamline...

Environmental artists, engaging a wide variety of media and expertise, are working to establish new connections with, neglected places. I use term "orphan spaces" to capture how I see how artists working in a new environmental frontier. Orphan spaces might be thought of as "un-places," and are distinctive in their lack of connections. They are mana...

Abstract. Compelling stories are essential to policies, and as policies face challenges the stories change. This chapter discusses three distinct but intertwined themes: (i) policy as meta-narrative, (ii) policy as narration, and (iii) policy as narrative-networks. First, policymakers (and other actors) construct general stories that serve to capt...

In this chapter we show the power of a narrative approach to the study of policy. With the tools of narrative analysis, policy scholars can better understand how convincing narratives capture the public imagination as well as build powerful supportive coalitions. Narrative analysis can also better inform scholars how narratives may change after law...

In this article we present a ‘narrative network' approach, which by virtue of its engagement with the non-human and with collaborative decision-making, is especially well suited to support social scientists in better comprehending the diverse possibilities for environmental governance in the Anthropocene. The most highly salient Anthropocene narrat...

A chance meeting between an ecological artist and an engaged citizen culminated in a transformative venture called The Fargo Project. The Project’s first installation, coined as “World Garden Commons” (WGC), transforms an existing 18-acre storm water basin into a lively, useful green space while maintaining the basin’s function as storm water storag...

For as long has humans have lived in communities, storytelling has bound people to each other and to their environments. In recent times, scholars have noted how social networks arise around issues of resource and ecological management. In this book, Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram argue that stories, or narratives, play a key role in t...

Much has been written about the role of boundary spanning networks in environmental governance. In these often emergent and heterogenous networks, discourse may be fragemented and inchoate and appear unable to support coalitions, yet still able to achieve successes. We discuss a recent conceptual development, that of the narrative-network, that aff...

To understand how organic agriculture has emerged as a visible practice, despite being marginalised until fairly recently, this chapter analyses the narrative-networks that sustained it for over fifty years before it was even considered a candidate for government support. They are key to understanding the ecological sophistication of alternative ag...

This aim of the book has been to explore and understand the role of narratives in informing and guiding environmental action, and this chapter brings together the conclusions. Through stories, narrators link themselves and their actions to a perceived larger system, so that the plot emerges from events and the actions of characters. As the case stu...

Highlighting the centrality of narratives, this chapter explains how methods used to analyse narrative can be used to explain how a network survives, as well as what it is. Narratives are the foundation that brings members of a group together, enabling it to function. As this chapter argues, narratives describe networks not just in terms of structu...

The case of the non-traditional ecological management that evolved on The Turtle Islands in the Sulu Sea offshore of Malaysia is examined in this chapter. It shows how alternative notions of what a system is can influence deep changes in environmental practice. When the Pawikan Conservation Project (PCP) arrived on the islands to start a turtle con...

The power of shared narrative to forge and sustain network ties is explored in this chapter, with particular attention to a gathering of The Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers. The goals of the chapter are to establish the applicability and usefulness of the narrative analysis framework, and to show that networked relationships, which in th...

Stories shape how we behave, and networks bind us to our environment, land, animals, resources, and each other. The aim of this book is to bring attention to the role of stories and networks in our environmental behavior. Awareness of these stories allows us to understand and change our behavior, and to hear the message of being richly responsible...

This chapter introduces the intellectual basis of network analysis, and highlights the power that networks have to cross boundaries between groups. It explores the power of the narrative form in the idea of networking as an emplotment of diverse characters, objects, and events. Storytelling allows group members to grasp the goals and values of netw...

For as long has humans have lived in communities, storytelling has bound people to each other and to their environments. In recent times, scholars have noted how social networks arise around issues of resource and ecological management. In this book, Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram argue that stories, or narratives, play a key role in t...

A touring exhibition shows the value of the Swiss 'artists-in-labs' programme, find Deborah Dixon, Harriet Hawkins and Mrill Ingram

The importance of social networks is highlighted in multiple theories of how environmental decisions are made and how policies are formed. Networks are particularly important determinants of innovation and knowledge production, two processes that can fundamentally alter sustainability outcomes. This talk explores these key linkages between social n...

Where they were once silent and poorly represented, microbes are now noisily and prolifically performing their way into the scientific imagination. Challenges scientists have faced in identifying microbes in their natural habitats, culturing them, and interpreting their behavior have been overcome in the last several years through new genetic and i...

It is with regret that I am announcing the end of my tenure as editor of Ecological Restoration. After founding the journal and providing almost 30 years of support, the University of Wisconsin–Arboretum has been compelled in part by financial challenges to close the editorial offices. As I write this, the University of Wisconsin Press has identifi...

Developing and strengthening a more mutualistic rela-tionship between the science of restoration ecology and the practice of ecological restoration has been a central but elusive goal of SERI since its inaugural meeting in 1989. We surveyed the delegates to the 2009 SERI World Conference to learn more about their perceptions of and ideas for improv...

I am pleased to introduce this full and exciting fall issue of Ecological Restoration. Guest editor Roberto Lindig Cisneros has pulled together eight full-length articles and four Restoration Notes describing a diverse range of restoration initiatives in Mexico. As he points out in his editorial in this issue, the country’s cultural diversity is ti...

As editor of a journal dedicated to the practice and science of ecological restoration, I regularly troll favored sources of information, searching through a broad swath of current media for pertinent discussions. I always find articles of interest in the ecology and natural resources management literatures, of course, but equally important are mai...

Environmental policies, from the management of microbes to the management of wolves, demonstrate that natural resources policy can either overlook or ignore important relationships between humans and nonhumans. This is, in part, because the regulatory sci-ence and sociology of expertise that inform policymaking can exacer-bate a preconceived separa...

The research and practice of urban ecological restoration have grown along with the expansion of urban areas that are home to the majority of the earth’s human population, and our increasing awareness of the breadth and depth of human impacts on our environment. The current discussion about ecological restoration in cities is seasoned by a heavy do...

Pesticide misuse in urban gardens contributes to pollution of lakes and rivers, ill health of humans and other organisms, and disruptions of ecological balances. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has been successfully used in agriculture for over 20 years, but its adoption by landscaping professionals has been slow. The 2-year project described here...

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its proposed rules on organic food production for public comment in 1997, the response was very large -- and largely negative. In the months following the release and invitation to comment, over a quarter of a million letters, postcards and emails poured in from individuals, farmers, traders, environ...

Across the United States and abroad, innovative producers, processors, trade organizations and others in the agricultural sector are exploring the promise of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) to improve their environmental and business performance. An Environmental Management System helps farmers develop their own, personal strategies for redu...

Organic cotton productionboomed in the early 1990s only to fall steeplymid-decade. Production is currently rising, butslowly, and has yet to reach previous levels.This is in marked contrast to the steady growthin organic food production during the 1990s.Why, when other areas of organic productionexperienced steady growth, did organic cottonexperien...

Following reports of dramatic declines in managed and feral honey bees from nearly every region of North America, scientists and resource managers from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada come together to review the quality of the evidence that honey bees as well as other pollinators are in long-term decline and to consider the potential consequences of t...

Following reports of dramatic declines in managed and feral honeybees from nearly every region of North America, scientists and resource managers from the US, Mexico and Canada came togther to review the quality of evidence that honey bees as well as other pollinators are in long-term decline and to consider the potential consequences of these loss...

Typescript. Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1991. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).