Storylines and their travels

Stuiver, MarianMarian Stuiver is senior in action research at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She is expert in regional governance processes.Her work aims to understand and improve the interactions between local communities and government policies in orde to develop(social and ecological) sustainable landscapes.

This book analyses the transition of the modern manure regime in the Dutch dairy sector over the last two decades. The book provides a 'thick description' of emerging networks of different actors (i.e. farmers, scientists). They work together on sustainable innovations in response to the crisis of the manure regime. The experiments with manure as well as the attempts at niche formation are analyzed. Moreover, the book addresses the importance of heterogeneous knowledge production in the present stage the manure regime is in. The actors develop common storylines on manure, science and policies. The storylines create internal coherence on what is new and innovative within the experiments. The storylines also give the new configurations meaning beyond the experiment and within the niche. To make the storylines more robust, different forms of alignment are necessary. Therefore the storylines alter the manure regime through external power. They are considered to be robust knowledge in other communities of practice, like new experiments, government bodies and scientific institutions.