Muck and Magic: A Resilience Lens on Organic Conversions as Transformation

Abstract

Transformation creates space to consider the profound changes necessary for society to pursue just and sustainable social-ecological systems. Transformation involves profound and complex change, yet there are few empirical studies that analyze transformation across multiple spheres of a social-ecological system. This article aims to address this gap by applying a resilience lens to analyze transformation as a component of UK farmers’ conversions of farmland from conventional to organic status. Transformation is identified as profound shifts in farmer understanding and management of soil fertility. The analysis finds that these transformations involve interplay between changes and scalar processes across political, practical, and personal spheres of transformation. Changes in the political sphere contradictorily drive, enable, and constrain transformation across political, practical, and personal spheres. We conclude that the empirical resilience analysis of transformation across spheres of a social-ecological system generates insights into the critical processes and changes necessary for society to pursue sustainable futures.