Relationship first: An experiential workshop on relationship-centered approaches to climate communication

Gathering a stellar and open-hearted group of scholars and practitioners at the Mayacamas Ranch in northern California. Photo by me.

Last spring, Clare Gupta and I received support from Invoking the Pause to hold a workshop on relationship-centered approaches to climate change, which I've written a lot about in recent years. The basic idea is "relationship first," meaning that even when it comes to these heady scientific topics, it can be helpful to prioritize relationships with people over making a point. But, doing so definitely invites deep learning, self-reflection, and adaptation. The good news is that other fields like law, medicine, and psychology have made a lot of progress in how professionals navigate this terrain, and so there are a lot of resources out there.

California water and drought on the TV box

I'm a television watcher -- or more accurately, a watcher of what passes for TV these days: streaming things onto various screens. What can I say? I adore pop culture and I work pretty hard with my brain all day and sometimes it likes to rest on entirely brainless things.

But, here's where my worlds are colliding. The thing I tire my brain out on all day is water. And, more and more, water is showing up on TV. As much as I try to ignore it, it's been super interesting to see how far the California drought is oozing into the deepest reaches of our psyches, at least as reflected in everything from family dramas to reality shows.

From water to agriculture, more evidence that human relationships matter

The interest in and recognition of the value of relational work when it comes to science and conservation, and really across all sectors, seems to be reaching a critical point. Just this week, several pieces on everything from farming to water scarcity to forest management directly addressed the generative power of relationships between people in environmental work. I am thrilled, to say the least.

Relatedness in action in science practice (#3)

In a beautiful blog post, Megan Adams gives a personal and honest account of both the benefits and challenges of community-engaged ecological research. In "Doing Science that Matters: Engaging with Communities in Collaborative Scientific Research," she describes working in coastal British Columbia and collaborating with groups of indigenous and non-indigenous people with "long-standing, adaptive, and evolving knowledge of natural systems" on a variety of projects.

Beyond the buzz: change-making with science

I recently wrote a post about how to "generate buzz" about research where I mentioned that, in my mind anyway, attention-getting should not be conflated with actual change-making. There are lots of ways of looking at change-making, and here I am mostly talking about broad-scale, societal, and, most likely, policy change. What this kind of change-making really comes down to for me is working with other people. That is why I started to blog to begin with, and why I focus so much on the concept of relatedness - here focused on deepening capacity as a scientist or practitioner to participate in change-making efforts.

Live tweeting a drought

By now, many of you have undoubtedly seen some version of these NASA images that compare snow cover in California between 2013 and 2014. Believe it or not, 2013 was considered a drought year (as was 2012), so you can only imagine the visceral reaction these images have brought up over the past couple of weeks, released on the heels of the news that 2013 was the driest year ever recorded in the state. With barely a drop of rain so far in 2014, who knows what is on the horizon.

Relatedness in action in science practice (#2)

As my first post on "relatedness in action" mentioned, I'm trying to make the concept less abstract by pointing to examples of it that I see in the science world. Science journalist Michelle Nijhuis recently wrote a piece in the New York Times Opinionator blog on "The Science and Art of Science Writing." You should go read the whole thing, but in short it beautifully describes her work as a newly minted college graduate who while "looking for strange animals in strange places" found herself even more fascinated by the scientists she was working with as they gathered eagerly around a rattlesnake than she was by the snake itself.

What if complexity can actually be helpful in science communication and engagement?

What if the ways that we commonly think of communicating science, for example, by simplifying, messaging, and framing, don't work as well in issue areas where prolonged conflict is present? What if, instead, complexity and nuance might be helpful in such situations? This may seem counter to my recent "how to" on publicizing research, but begins to speak to the difference between "buzz generation" and change-making I mentioned there.

How to generate buzz about research

One of the most common activities I engage in as a scientist and communications practitioner is working to "generate buzz" about the research work I either participate in or that the various organizations I've worked for fund or are otherwise engaged in. Since I have yet to write about much of the practical work that I do, I'm trying it just to see how it goes, and maybe it will be useful for some.

Grief and science

Grief. It's a mouthful. It kind of hangs in the air when spoken, it can even be heavy on the page and the screen. Some people might view it as a downer of topic for this time of year, others might be relieved by its expression during these long nights. I remember the first time a person I deeply respect told me with great compassion that she saw me struggling with grief  - it was many years ago and I actually found it deeply confusing. And yet, now, it is so clear that was what exactly what that feeling was. I'd experienced it acutely a couple of times with the loss of a friend, a teacher, a grandparent. The idea that grief could also be chronic was new to me.

The only way is together

I have had a several experiences lately that have led to a more embodied sense of both the futile and counter-productive nature of “getting” anybody to do anything, at least on a long-term basis and in a way that doesn't ultimately feel terrible. As a simple example, say I am on a walk in the woods with a friend. I might want to go one way, while she might want to go another. I could try to persuade her to go where I want to go, and I may have a lot of well-informed reasons about why "my way" is the best way. But, if my goal is to truly be with my friend, to be connected and in relationship, I would be best served by working with her to figure out what works for both of us, rendering "my way" pretty pointless. Sure - there's a possibility that together we might go over a cliff, but as much as I'd like to think it's not the case, I could just as easily end up over the cliff going my own way.

Relatedness in action in science practice

Although these days I spend a lot of time writing in a theoretical way about relationship-centered approaches to science and engagement (in short, explicitly recognizing the importance of relationships between people in science), I am, first and foremost, a practitioner and most interested in just doing good work every day. To that end, I am trying to spend time recognizing work that I think of as "relatedness in action" -- even though the people doing it might not primarily see it that way -- both to make the topic less abstract and to help myself continue to work pragmatically.

Welcoming resistance

Recently, I was lucky enough to be a part of a circle at a small professional retreat focused on process and relationship-building where a group of incredible people with really diverse experiences, many dedicated to social justice and peace-building efforts, shared recent challenges in their work. After a long and winding discussion, the facilitators were able to masterfully weave together a strong thread that had emerged from the conversation. In sum, that thread was that the very places where we face the strongest resistance can often be the exact places that our work is most needed, and hardest. And, that maybe instead of viewing resistance as failure, we could see it as a sign that there really is something to be done there, simply based on the fact that the push-back exists.

Conflict, emotion, and engagement in science: Internal conflict (Part 2)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I come very much from a community engagement perspective in the sciences, having spent a lot of time working in cooperative extension and as a scientist in an environmental advocacy organization. These are arenas in which relationships between people play a central role in the scientific and technical work of the institutions as a whole, and certainly for individuals. Engagement work is, for me, the best and only way to work. It is really rewarding, but there is no denying that at times it can also be uncomfortable and challenging when we inevitably disagree or have different needs or whatever the case may be.

Contemplative practice in the sciences

In 2011, I gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America annual meeting on contemplative practices and community engagement in the sciences. The following year, I published a short paper on a related topic "From science communication to relationship-building: contemplative practice and community engagement in the environmental sciences." In some ways, I wish that I’d detached the issues of engagement and relationship-building from contemplative practice and written two separate articles, but, well, hindsight and all that. Even with 20/20 backwards vision, I still feel like bringing up a problem (getting from communicating to relating) without a solution (the contemplation piece) isn't super productive, but I also see that for folks uncomfortable with idea of contemplative practice, I obscured the relationship building piece.

Science has a relationship problem

Yes, that's a provocative title, and an over-simplification. At the same time, over the past few years it has been one of the main ideas I put forward in conversations and presentations and papers, and it does seem to resonate with many people (particularly practitioners) - the idea that science has not so much (or just) a communication challenge as a relationship challenge.

Everybody altogether - from "audiences" to "communities"

Audience. I try my hardest to use this word pretty judiciously. We live in an interconnected world - people are organized into communities or networks or however you want to envision it - they have relationships with each other. It's the main way that people hear about (much less act on) things - through the people that they are connected to. And even the connections themselves are ever shifting.

Conflict, emotion, & engagement in science: Some context (Part 1)

I am going to write a small series of posts about the role of conflict in an engaged in the natural sciences and, to start, I think it’s important to provide a bit of context. Beginning in graduate school, I spent many years working within the cooperative extension system. I won’t spend a lot of time explaining extension because, well, google, and because many are familiar with it (a good recent piece in Wired is worth a read though). The main thing to say here is that from my perspective it provides one of the most direct, relationship-focused interfaces with communities that a scientist could ever want – it’s fantastic that way. It is an original example of an institutional approach to use-driven or actionable research and outreach; it's a system that was designed from the outset to provide research within an academic, yet service-driven context.

On listening in science communication

It is heartening to see more discussion of the listening side of science communication world of late. I first wrote about the topic in a 2012 article on moving toward relationship-building and engagement in science communication. A discussion with a beloved and wise person in my life spurred me to better define what I meant by listening. The result was that in the article I said: