Hayley MacGregor: health and the STEPS Centre's pathways approach

The ESRC STEPS CentreSocial

Technological and

Environmental

Pathways to

Sustainability

Global challenges in a dynamic world….

STEPS challenges

• Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice

• Making science and technology work for the poor

Conventional approach failures

• Separate sectors and disciplines• Assumed stability and certainty• Universalised views• Missing targets, failing the poor

www.steps-centre.org

The STEPS approach from singular solution towards multiple pathways

• Understanding dynamic patterns & pathways of change• Addressing governance - politics and institutions• New tools and methods for appraisal, deliberation,

mobilisation• Building pathways to Sustainability - involving poorer and

marginalised people, contributing to their goals• Across food & agriculture, health & disease,

water & sanitation


What makes STEPS different

• Social and natural scientists working together• Linking development studies with science and

technology studies• Interactive research involving citizens and decision-

makers• Reflexive approach, appreciating how one’s position

affects action• Adaptive approach, dealing with uncertainty and building

resilience• Building on the knowledge and perspectives of

marginalised people• Integrating research and communication


Initial global projects with partners

• Crop disease & innovation: Negotiating maize innovation pathways, Kenya

• Urbanisation: Building peri-urban Sustainability, India• Rethinking regulation: Seed, drug and water

regulation, China and Argentina • Risk, uncertainty & technology: Responses to

technological risks and uncertainties, India & UK • Epidemics: Addressing epidemics, livelihoods and the

politics of policy, Africa, Asia, Latin America


Epidemics

• Capture public and policy attention• Effective responses a challenge• How to generate sustainable responses that benefit

health and wellbeing of all • STEPS work: exploring complex dynamics at play in

health/environment interface• Paying attention to short and long term drivers of

disease


Dynamic Contexts

• Diseases arise in dynamic contexts• STEPS work explores a range of case studies• Concern about rate of emergence of new diseases• Established diseases shifting into new geographic niches• Resistant disease strains • Zoonotic disease and complex human-animal-

environment interactions• Changing contexts: a range of drivers and exacerbating

factors to keep in mind


Epidemic Narratives

• Accounts of the causes and appropriate responses to outbreaks of a disease

• Reflect different perspectives eg policy-makers, scientists, local populations

• Reflect different ways of framing the issues – affect who is blamed, who gains and who loses from responses

• Dominant versus hidden narratives• Interested in how the category of epidemic disease is

itself constructed and can shift over time and according to perspective eg HIV and AIDS


Haemorrhagic Fevers

• The power of different perspectives on disease(Leach and Hewlett)

• Four narratives:1. Global Outbreak2. Deadly local disease events3. Best managed with local cultural practices4. Requiring longer term insights from both ecology and

social science approaches


Implications

• The power of dominant narratives to shape responses• Contribution of neglected understandings• Need to pay more attention to interactions between long

and shorter term drivers• The importance of integrating different understandings• The methodological challenges of interdisciplinary work


Education

Hayley MacGregor: health and the STEPS Centre's pathways approach