Data_Sheet_1_Agroecological Transitions: A Systematic Review of Research Approaches and Prospects for Participatory Action Methods.PDF

There have been many calls for an agroecological transition to respond to food shocks and crises stemming from conventional food systems. Participatory action research and transformative epistemologies, where communities are research actors rather than objects, have been proposed as a way to enhance this transition. However, despite numerous case studies, there is presently no overview of how participatory approaches contribute to agroecological transitions. The present article therefore aims to understand the effect of applying participatory action research (PAR) in agroecology. We undertook a systematic review of articles reporting methods and results from case studies in agroecological research. On the one hand, our systematic review of 347 articles shows that the agroecological research scope is broad, with all three types—as science, a set of practices and social movement—well-represented in the corpus. However, we can see a clear focus on agroecology “as a set of practices” as the primary type of use of the concept. On the other hand, we found a few case studies (23) with a participatory approach while most studies used extractive research methods. These studies show that understanding the drivers and obstacles for achieving an agroecological transition requires long-term research and trust between researchers and farmers. Such transformative epistemologies open doors to new questions on designing long-term PAR research in agroecology when confronted with a short-term project-based society.

为应对源自传统粮食系统的粮食冲击与危机，学界与实务界已多次呼吁推动农业生态转型（agroecological transition）。以社区作为研究主体而非研究客体的参与式行动研究（participatory action research，PAR）与转型认识论，已被提出作为推进该转型的可行路径。然而，尽管已涌现大量案例研究，目前尚无综述系统性梳理参与式方法对农业生态转型的推动作用。因此，本文旨在探究参与式行动研究（PAR）应用于农业生态学领域的实际效应。为此，我们针对报告了农业生态学研究案例研究方法与结果的文献开展了系统性综述。一方面，针对347篇文献的系统性综述显示，农业生态学研究的范畴极为宽泛，其三大核心内涵——作为科学学科、作为实践体系、作为社会运动——在本综述的文献库中均有充分体现。但可以明显看出，当前研究对农业生态学概念的应用，主要聚焦于"作为实践体系"这一内涵。另一方面，我们仅发现23项采用参与式方法的案例研究，绝大多数研究均采用了榨取式研究方法（extractive research methods）。此类研究表明，要厘清推动农业生态转型的驱动因素与阻碍因素，需要开展长期研究，并建立研究者与农户之间的信任联结。在当前以短期项目为导向的社会语境下，这类转型认识论为如何设计农业生态学领域的长期参与式行动研究（PAR）提出了全新的研究议题。