Common Sense in Environmental Management

<p><em>Common Sense in Environmental Management</em> examines common sense not in theory but in practice. Jonathan Woolley argues that common sense as a concept is rooted in English experiences of landscape and land management and examines it ethnographically - unveiling common sense as key to understanding how British nature and public life are transforming in the present day.</p><p>Common sense encourages English people to tacitly assume that the management of land and other resources should organically converge on a consensus that yields self-evident practical results. Furthermore the English then tend to assume that their own position reflects that consensus. Other stakeholders are not seen as having legitimate but distinct expertise and interests – but are rather viewed as being stupid and/or immoral for ignoring self-evident pragmatic truths. Compromise is therefore less likely and land management practices become entrenched and resistant to innovation and improvement. Through a detailed ethnographic study of the Norfolk Broads this book explores how environmental policy and land management in rural areas could be more effective if a truly <i>common</i> sense was restored in the way we manage our shared environment.</p><p>Using academic and lay deployments of common sense as a route into the political economy of rural environments this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of socio-cultural anthropology sociology human geography cultural studies social history and the environmental humanities.</p>