Common Sense in Environmental Management

Jonathan Woolley is an Affiliated Researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, UK. He was awarded his PhD in March 2018, following over a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the Broads National Park, upon which this book is based. Jonathan’s research there was part of an AHRC-funded research project at the University, Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate, which explored the styles of learning about the environment that exist in different cultures around the world. Jonathan has also written on East Anglian folklore, nature spirituality, and public engagement with environmental and cultural heritage.

• Table of Figures Preface – Common sense: A briefing for policymakers The problem – Siloing obstructs effective Environmental Land Management What is common sense? How does it shape English society and land management? How should policymakers respond? AcknowledgementsIntroduction – Common sense questions Why: Why Common Sense? Where: The Broads as a Fieldsite What: A Commonsense Argument Bibliography Chapter 1 – Do academics have common sense? Koinē aísthēsis and other opinions: Key philosophical debates on common sense "Sons of the Soil": Etymologies of common sense Common sense as a social scientific object Common sense as a political object Chapter 2 – What is common sense? Common sense as a vernacular object Common sense in vernacular use Chapter 2: Where is common sense to be found? Learned voices: Common land in environmental histories of Broadland Working Voices: "Bad Farming", Tidyness and the Balance of Contemporary Rural Life in Norfolk Concerned voices: Current trends in Britain’s rural economy Analysis: Work, Common Land and the Process of Enclosure in Broadland Conclusion: The Institution of Common Ground Chapter 4 – Can you learn common sense? Overview: Strumpshaw Fen as a Place of Desire Underview: Thicket Description of Working Your Way Through the Landscape Counterview: Quiet Enjoyment and Visitor Experience Interview: Farmers, Children, and the Acquisition of Common Sense Teleview: "Broadland Consciousness" versus "Barrier Consciousness" Chapter 5 – Why is common sense so scarce?Hickling Broad: A lack of common ground Bird Farmers: Catfield Fen and Landscape-Scale Conservation Fragmenting Corporeal Attitudes: Habitus and "The Silo Effect" Trials and Errors: The trouble with common sense Conclusion: Chedgrave Common and the Apogee of Commoning Conclusions – What do we need to know about common sense?Gillian Tett, Robert Kett, and the Division of Labour