Participatory multidimensional assessment of grazing systems.

GRAZY! is intended to explore the various understandings of multifunctionality and to turn them into methodological tools that could be shared between researchers from distinct disciplinary backgrounds and geographical contexts, between stakeholders of the livestock sector working in different parts of the world, and betweenstakeholders and researchers working in a same geographical area.
It keeps a view to validating a model that could be used in other research sites of the GASL network.

Assuming that a valid model can’t be anything else than a “co-truth” (Bouleau, 2014), resulting from the confrontation of plural interpretations, we use video to enrich and feed modelling activities. Our method will consist in 3 steps: (1) Starting from video footage, we shall edit movies in order to generate debates among constituted focus groups of stakeholders on the various functionalities of livestock systems. (2) Then, we shall transcribe those debates in order to extract narratives. (3) Finally, we shall use these narratives to refine a conceptual framework previously elaborated.

The concrete outcomes will be both the production of a relevant research tool for studying livestock farming at a global scale, and a reflexive approach on the methodology used to produce it. Besides an updated conceptual model allowing to assess the multifunctionality of grazing systems, two short movies will be produced: a thematic one, allowing to discuss the issues related to multifunctionality in different kinds of arenas, and a reflexive one, clarifying the whole research process through a film conceived as a methodological ’making-of’.

GRAZY! is designed as a transdisciplinary and participatory research project, in which researchers will engage with stakeholders in a joint research process. Whereas video is mainly used in agriculture for developing and disseminating techniques and technologies, films will be used in this project as a means to increase stakeholders’ reflexiveness.