Making knowledge and meaning in communities of practice: what role may science play? The case of sustainable soil management in England

Social learning is gaining popularity as a tool for understanding and designing interactions between experts and farming communities to enhance the uptake of sustainable and innovative farming practices. To date the literature has mainly focused on the technical role scientists and researchers play in social learning, as sources of or co-producers of knowledge. Social learning, however, implies a dynamic between the creation of knowledge (what can be done) and the creation of meaning (what is considered worth doing). This paper addresses this research gap by exploring the roles that ‘expert’ actors and their narratives perform in meaning-creation. I argue that a sustainable soil management community of practice is emerging in England, and discuss the dynamics of farmer participation in this community. I further argue that members of this community use scientific ‘experts’ and narratives to inspire, justify, and legitimise sustainable soil management as a valid way of being a ‘good farmer’. This paper thus stresses the role that scientific or ‘expert’ actors and narratives play in communities of practice as contributors to meaning-creation inherent to social learning. How soil degradation will be addressed is as much a technical question, a question of what can be done, as a question of meaning, a question of what land managers consider worthwhile doing. The scientific community thus needs to work with the farming community not only to co-produce technical solutions, but also to co-produce shared visions of agrarian futures which put soils at their heart.