Swedish coastal fisheries are not sustainable in terms of the status of their main fish stocks, their economic profitability, and as source of regular employment. Social sustainability commitments in fisheries governance advocated by the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines) have been so far mostly neglected. In this chapter, we bring attention to two institutional settings at different governance levels relevant for the implementation of the SSF Guidelines in the Swedish context. First, we look at the introduction of social goals under the perspective of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Second, we consider national tensions between forces advocating or opposing a further application of market-based economic instruments, often portrayed as an effective cure for all ills, in fisheries governance. Taking into account the logic on which the SSF Guidelines rest, we evaluate in both cases current processes for stakeholder participation in the formulation of fishing policies and strategies in Sweden. We conclude that the inclusion of a social dimension and stakeholder involvement at the EU level face procedural and institutional limitations that prevent the small-scale fisheries sector from exploiting opportunities for change. Further challenges to the implementation of the SSF Guidelines arise when central national authorities’ interpretation of societal benefits opposes other interpretations, and consequently economic calculations take precedence over a participatory process-based, knowledge-accumulating approach to resource management. The SSF Guidelines, therefore, provide important material and intellectual resources to make the most of new chances that can lead to an increased likelihood of change in the direction of sustainable coastal fisheries in Sweden. 

The most critical question for climate research is no longer about the problem, but about how to facilitate the transformative changes necessary to avoid catastrophic climate-induced change. Addressing this question, however, will require massive upscaling of research that can rapidly enhance learning about transformations. Ten essentials for guiding action-oriented transformation and energy research are therefore presented, framed in relation to second-order science. They include: (1) Focus on transformations to low-carbon, resilient living; (2) Focus on solution processes; (3) Focus on ‘how to’ practical knowledge; (4) Approach research as occurring from within the system being intervened; (5) Work with normative aspects; (6) Seek to transcend current thinking; (7) Take a multi-faceted approach to understand and shape change; (8) Acknowledge the value of alternative roles of researchers; (9) Encourage second-order experimentation; and (10) Be reflexive. Joint application of the essentials would create highly adaptive, reflexive, collaborative and impact-oriented research able to enhance capacity to respond to the climate challenge. At present, however, the practice of such approaches is limited and constrained by dominance of other approaches. For wider transformations to low carbon living and energy systems to occur, transformations will therefore also be needed in the way in which knowledge is produced and used.

In this chapter, we analyze a number of challenges concerning the possibilities of seaweed reaching a larger Swedish retail market. Consumers seem to be quite open and flexible regarding the positioning of seaweed products in stores. As previous research has shown, certain consumer groups feel like taking responsibility when it comes to consuming more sustainably. These consumer groups could function as early adopters for new seaweed products and be targeted accordingly. Retailers and practitioners could help consumers to understand these new products by educating them about sustainability and providing sustainability services. Vegetarian or vegan alternatives for already-established products could be placed next to these familiar foods in order to make it easy for the consumer to understand how the new product is intended to be used, and how it fits into current cooking and eating practices. The results reveal a disparity and ambivalence in consumers’ attitudes and approaches to seaweed, paving the way for new consumer insights, retail guiding, and in-store services. We emphasize the responsibility of the retail sector in being one of the main actors introducing alternative and new food products. We also raise issues relating to communication, organization, and to how to facilitate sustainable food.

We take our empirical and theoretical starting point in the practices of ecopreneurship in the making of marine markets. Seaweed has gained renewed relevance in the wake of a growing interest in alternative production and consumption. This coincides with a widespread interest in the environment and the production of sustainable lifestyles. In this context, there are a number of women entrepreneurs who, for various reasons, have chosen to invest their time and work in seaweed. The making of seaweed as a valuable resource takes place, and makes sense, in specific settings. Seaweed is related to different kinds of values and narratives depending on context. To gain a deeper understanding of how these ecopreneurs cope with tensions between different values, we set out to analyse the performative dimensions of a number of ideological narratives. The production of seaweed as a sustainable resource involves sensemaking processes, shaped as scenes and storylines that carry a specific meaning. In the process of sensemaking different seaweed stories are produced and re-produced as narratives. What kind of stories and practices are activated in the making of a sustainable and creative lifestyle? How is seaweed performed and described as a significant resource in green entrepreneurial practices? 

Sustainability science research is characterized by its high transdisciplinary ambitions. However, despite claims to urgent social change, important sustainability principles—including social complexity issues such as learning and knowledge sharing among stakeholders—are not fully contextualized and understood within the general framework of sustainability science research. To explore possible synergies between sustainability science research and social analysis, this chapter uses a qualitative method to account for the theoretical and practical implementation of a transdisciplinary research process. Through one example of a change in Swedish natural resource management policy, the paper demonstrates how a top–down and bottom–up conflict in natural resource management was dealt with by the creation of an innovative environmental governance constellation. This was done by the mobilization of the theoretical concept of ‘boundary objects’ to develop and maintain coherence over time between stakeholders and social worlds sharing a common sustainability interest but with conflicting stakes. It is concluded that ‘boundary objects’—here, a new communication platform—can facilitate cooperation between stakeholders regarding the complexities of social–ecological systems governance and policy. 

The EU strategy for rural development 2014-2020 proposes a focus on tourism as a solution to bring economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainable development together. Using the case of fishing tourism in Sweden, we discuss the marketization of sustainable development on a destination market. We focus on the discursive and practical tension between ambitions for development and maintenance. In a two-step analysis, we problematize the win-win consensus of sustainable tourism discourse in relation to different stakeholders’ competing uses of limited resources in practice. We show how stakeholders understand the stakes of sustainable tourism as either lost opportunities for development due to failed regulation of a natural resource, or as deteriorating social relations due to failed maintenance of socio-cultural values. We argue for the acknowledgement of social complexity in market theoretizations in order to transfer sustainable tourism from the agenda of business potential and traditional marketing to the domain of participatory politics.

Marine spatial planning (MSP) can be understood as mapping and (re)bordering a three-dimensional landscape in time and space. We theorize MSP in Southern Sweden by the environmental ethics expressed in Torsten Hägerstrand’s time-geography. By doing this, we are able to pose questions about wise resource use and human-environment interaction.In Southern Swedish municipalities, MSP is typically coordinated by one ecologist and one planner. The ecologist is primarily concerned with conservation and can be said to act as ‘the voice of nature’. The planner focuses on use and is concerned with distribution of activities in time and space. When mapping the marine three-dimensional landscape, one of their tools is ecosystem services.We show how MSP is a process where economic issues associated with costs are transformed into values of environmental stewardship and sustainability ethics via the notion of benefits. Ecosystem services are used as a pedagogical tool to communicate with politicians in terms of municipal benefits, and with the public in terms of the values of caring for the environment.We conclude that the landscape of sustainability ethics resulting from MSP is dependent on (1) the combination of ecological and planning practices, and (2) the mediating function of ecosystem services. The result is that MSP can be understood as time-geography in practice where ecosystem services are used to dissolve the border between environment and society to create a new fluid landscape of environmental ethics.

The fulfillment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is very much an issue about resources: How are resources articulated, created, and utilized? What is considered a resource, what exists in abundance, what is scarce, and when does something cease to be a resource? In our contribution, we address these issues with a focus on seaweed. By analyzing stories from environmental planners and ecopreneurs about seaweed, we demonstrate the phenomenon called resourcification — the social process that makes something a resource. From the stories, we illustrate the contexts of the resourcification and de-resourcification of seaweed. This allows us to show how resources, such as seaweed, are socially produced and become part of life. To conclude, we suggest that resourcification provides a provisional sustainability storyline suitable for working toward the SDGs in the Anthropocene.

The article addresses the broader relationships between seaweed and algae as a marine resource, destination development, and sustainability. In many European countries, an industry around seaweed has emerged, ranging from high-end restaurants that provide their customers with local, seasonal and sustainable ingredients, to entrepreneurs offering “harvest your own seaweed”-tours. In this explorative study, we focus on different ways of experiencing this marine resource in a Swedish context, to better understand its economic and social potential. Taking a consumer perspective, we investigate through an online questionnaire and reviews from an online consumer-to-consumer travel-planning portal how seaweed and algae are validated. By exploring people's notions, the aim is to understand the potential and value of this marine resource better. Where is seaweed encountered and enjoyed? How is it used? What is experienced to be valuable about this resource? We identify possibilities for utilizing algae and seaweed in order to foster future business opportunities for local communities, as well as to integrate the resource more in our society. We show how algae and seaweed are experienced in diverse settings and dimensions, such as at home, while being a tourist, as part of everyday life, as a special treat, within nature, and as food.

This paper constructs an ethics of managing by reading Latour’s notion of Gaia with Arendt’s notion of storytelling. Gaia implies reframing the ethical foundation for making stories as well as it has ontological consequences for how we perceive stories. We suggest reframing storytelling into storymaking. This concept attunes to how storymaking is part of making life that becomes through, relies on, and is answerable to multiple other lives: human as well as nonhuman. Second, storymaking allows depicting managers’ imagination of themselves and what they do in the complex webs of relations that managers are part of. We put storymaking to work in discussing the processes of translation that occur when new managers transition from management education for sustainability to work life. Our re-storying of their stories attunes to their ethical compass and how they enact it into being. We attune to the tensions involved in building a stable foundation for their storymaking and the compromises they make in coping with fleeting and, at times, chaotic organizational realities. Attuning to how organizations make life and affect the conditions of caring for life is important for judging organizational action. Second, storymaking allows understanding of managing as a process that involves making stories about life spiritually and materially, thereby stabilizing life amid chaos. 

Popular Abstract in Swedish Inom många olika fält hyllas dialogen. Det finns en stark och utbredd tro, främst i det västerländska samhället, att lyckas man bara upprätta en dialog kan man planera i samförstånd och lösa problem. Människor talar med varandra för att förstå, hjälpa varandra och för att skapa gemensamma värden och målsättningar. I studiet av samtal upptäcker man emellertid snabbt att dessa också skapar problem och konflikter samt att människor också talar för att manipulera och kontrollera varandra. Våren 1997 startade man ett samarbete mellan främst föräldrar och skolledning på en dövskola i södra Sverige. Under drygt tre års tid besökte jag dessa möten som regelbundet hölls på skolan. Mötena varade mellan två till tre timmar och sjutton stycken av dessa möten besöktes och spelades in på band. Utskrifterna av dessa möten har sedan analyserats och de utgör huvuddelen av denna studie. På skolan menade man att en stor fördel med att skapa ett fungerande samarbete mellan hem och skola var att man på så sätt konstruerade en helhetssyn på barnen och deras situation. Genom samarbetet föreställde man sig att skolan skulle bli en bättre skola, vilket i sin tur skulle göra eleverna tryggare och inlärningsprocessen smidigare. Hur upprättar man en dialog när samtalet är av känslig art? Hur undviker man att hamna i ett alltför problemtyngt samtalsklimat? Hur balanserar man mellan spontana reaktioner och välformulerade samtalspunkter inom det institutionella mötessammanhanget? I avhandlingen belyses sådana frågor främst via analysen av retoriska manövrer och dialogiska aspekter så som exempelvis skapandet av olika samtalsklimat och samtalsstilar. Samtidigt leder studiet av dessa frågor fram till analyser av hur parterna väljer att presenterar sig själva och vilka egenskaper och karaktärsdrag man i sin tur väljer att lyfta fram hos den andre och i talet om eleverna. I samtalen mellan parterna måste ”det problematiska” på ett eller annat sätt kläs i ord och i det specifika sammanhanget uppstår olika förklaringsmodeller. Dessa förklaringsmodeller kan i sin tur studeras som kategoriseringsprocesser av de döva barnen, av föräldrarna och de som arbetar på skolan. I studien visas hur dessa tolkningar vidmakthålls, legitimeras och förändras i själva samtalssituationen. För att fördjupa förståelsen för hur samtalen på skolan kan förstås använder jag mig av två metaforer. I början av avhandlingen tolkar jag samtalen som en trafiksituation och i det avslutande kapitlet utvecklar jag förståelsen genom att föra in ytterligare en bild av samtalet som ett snurrande cykelhjul. Dessa bilder aktiveras och används växelvis under analysarbetets gång. Jag vill visa att samtal både kan förstås som en styrd handling och som en handling med oförutsedda element. Här blandas förväntade och oväntade inslag. Här möts det som sägs på rutin och det som överraskar i stunden. En slutsats är att parterna i samtal med varandra oavsett vad man talar om, på ett eller annat sätt, tycks sträva efter ett visst mått av konsensus. Ett sätt att försöka bevara och sträva mot ett samförståndsideal kan i samtalssituationen handla om att undvika känsliga ämnen genom att aldrig klart uttala vad det är man talar om. Här analyseras vagheten som en samtalsmässig styrka. Det undvikande talet kan sägas möjliggöra ett enande av parterna. Det är främst utifrån ett konstruktivistiskt perspektiv som jag studerar mitt material. Påståenden, antaganden och beskrivningar skapas och används i relation till sociala omständigheter. På så sätt kan jag i argumentationsgången visa hur man talar om de sociala rollerna så som ”förälder” eller ”rektor” och hur dessa fylls med olika innebörder. Sammanfattningsvis vill jag med mina analyser visa att det är i de små och pågående talhandlingarna som olika perspektiv och positioner verbaliseras, synliggörs, utmanas och förändras.

Abstract in Undetermined Ecological, economic, and social sustainability has been prioritized by the European Union in its proposal for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), but it is recognized that there is a lack of knowledge concerning the objectives of these three aspects. Addressing the issue of how these objectives are given meaning as policy is being articulated, two Swedish seminars where fisheries' stakeholders discuss the proposal for a reformed CFP are analyzed. The analysis shows how fish become defined as a specific kind of resource and how their status as a resource is framed as a moral issue. Once morally charged the resource is subjected to valorization through economic modeling. As a result, the potential for sustainability in fisheries becomes conditional upon the creation of new markets.

The world of coastal fisheries is full of tensions and conflicts. On the public arena, professional fishing is often associated with the overtaxing of resources, unsustainable harvest practices and blame-games among actors. But fisheries are also upheld by boundary crossings, situated knowledge and relational work. Through the coexistence of such different patterns of rationality places are made. Through an empirical analysis of this complex situation as it has emerged in Öresund between Denmark and southern Sweden, we show how the tension between an ecological and an instrumental rationality results in the creation of Öresund cod fisheries – as place and contested practice. Through open-ended interviews with active and retired fishermen and representatives from a major legislative agency in combination with document analyses, we contextualize everyday place-making in relation to national and supra-national institutional frameworks. For the fisherman the making of place is a result of observations, listening, talking and doing in many different kinds of situations, while for institutional bodies place-making is abstract and based on quantifications, abstracted knowledge and control. By contrasting these competing and pragmatic logics the paper can be understood as a discussion on how the relationship between nature and society emerges as problematic in discourse and practice. In one way then, the study investigates the obstacles that surround fisheries and sustainable resource use. In another way, however, the discussion opens up for the possibilities to adopt an ecological perspective that prioritizes the co-presence in time and space of different knowledges.

The normative implications of sustainable development mean that different understandings of how sustainability should be achieved will either facilitate or put at risk different values associated with economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability. By a qualitative analysis of Swedish fishery legislation documents, we analyse and outline the consequences of two different and competing sustainability epistemologies: a top-down system understanding and a bottom-up experiential understanding. To define these two epistemologies, the case study adopts discourse analysis on one fishery law and one fishery regulation proposal, and the remittance answers to these documents. We demonstrate how a top-down system approach shapes social reality according to its own logic of efficiency, and that pre-defined principles of economic optimization prevail over social experience and continuity. We conclude that qualitative analysis holds promise to expand the understanding of the premises and consequences of alternative environmental governance trajectories due to its ability to uncover social constructions of meaning.

In the Anthropocene, it becomes problematic to imagine a sustain-able balance between society and the environment. This calls for post-sustainability modes of articulating human/non-human rela-tionships. As an attempt towards an Anthropocenic understanding of society and the environment, we analyse how ecosystem services are mobilised in marine spatial planning in the south of Sweden. The study investigates how ecosystem services are understood and narrated in environmental strategy and interviews with environ-mental planners. We focus on seaweed and sand. These are two kinds of materials and potential resources that materially circulate   Volume2635The making of a beachFilippa SäweJohan HultmanCecilia Fredrikssonacademicquarterresearch from the humanitiesakademisk kvarterAAUand force together society and the environment in planning dis-course and practice. Our findings show that although ecosystem services are readily understood as an anthropocentric construc-tion, when mobilised in planning to manage an unruly nature they can be re-storied as an ontological mediator in human/non-human relations.

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the conditions for co-creation in a non-commercial context. The particular aim is to show how a co-creative activity is framed for the participants and the consequences of the frames for the values that are co-created in the process. Design/methodology/approach – Goffman’s frame analysis is applied to investigate how co-creation is used as a marketing strategy where an art event is used as an engagement platform to involve citizens in creating visions for an urban renewal area. It is a qualitative study based on observations. Findings – The taken-for-granted ideas of the active and creative consumer along with the focus in marketing research on the positive values achieved in a co-creative process are problematic in a public context. An unreflexive use of a co-creative strategy in a non-commercial setting and using art as an engagement platform, in combination with insufficient communication about the new framings, result in no-creation of value or even co-destruction of value. Practical implications – Unclear definition of the situation for co-creation results in confusion about how to interact and how to create value. Such an outcome is highly problematic for a public organization. It is of major importance that citizens can identify and understand the type of activity. The authors argue that communication in well-defined phases of an event can facilitate desired acts of co-creation. Originality/value – Value co-creation theory has been transferred between contexts, but there are few studies of what the transfer means in terms of consumer abilities to take part in the value creation process and its rules of engagement. This study demonstrates the difficulties of moving from theory to practice when the context changes from a commercial to a public participatory one. This opens for new research venues in value co-creation and marketing theory.

It is a well-established practice in European cities to use large-scale projects for the purpose of geographical branding. As a radical strategy, urban renewal projects are used for branding purposes. To communicate visions to internal and external stakeholders are essential to establish and legitimize processes of change and large investments and costs related to the project. The aim of the study is to discuss how art events is used as a visual communication strategy in a city renewal project, how crucial stakeholders understand the strategy and the consequences for using art events as a way to create an image of a project and for the city. Four rationalities for using art events in a city renewal project are identified and will be presented. Interviews with stakeholders revealed their different perspectives and understanding of using art events as a communication strategy. There seems to be a clash of perspectives. The differences will be elaborated in the presentation and consequences for the project as well as for the stakeholders will be discussed. The presentation will provide deeper understanding of the challenge of using visual strategies in projects involving many stakeholders.

This article focuses on co-creation as a strategy and the challenge of applying theories of co-creation in practice. Place branding and a co-creative strategy based on art is used as an example of a special type of public relations concerned with building connections between stakeholders and a specific place. This is investigated through an analysis of how key internal stakeholders in a municipality understand the co-creative strategy for branding urban renewal, looking at their understanding, alignment and support for the strategy. An organizational ethnographic approach is used and the analysis is based on interviews with 16 administrative municipal managers from five different departments. Four different rationales are identified among managers. The study highlights how these profound rationales among internal stakeholders become a challenge in branding. In theories of co-creation, absolute consensus between stakeholders is assumed. In complex organizations, such as municipality, a more realistic goal is to establish compatible zones of meaning among internal stakeholders. It is concluded that public relations practitioners and researchers must cope with this reality when they approach public relations as co-creation.