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7 Producing Results through Social Networks On numerous occasions when I have met with collaboratives working in a community , they have cited the importance of social networks for implementing their work. The first time I noticed the role of these networks was in 1995, when I was visiting a streambank restoration project with a catchment coordinator in Queensland. We drove out to the landowner’s farm in a dusty flatbed pickup called a “ute.” We arrived to find the landowner pulling weeds around an assortment of small saplings planted on a streambank. The landowner proudly showed off the project, describing how the erosion had been undercutting the banks and creating a hazard for cattle trying to access the river. With funding and technical support from the catchment committee, the landowner had graded the banks, removed exotic weeds, planted native trees, fenced off the river to prevent cattle from trampling into the streambed, and built an off-stream watering system. The landowner was farsighted and a typical “early adopter.” He had heard about the streambank program from a friend on the committee and volunteered to participate. Thus, the interpersonal network of the committee participants had an influence on the landowner. But the story does not end there. After the catchment coordinator had finished inspecting the saplings, the farmer commented that his neighbor had stopped by to talk to him about the project. The coordinator asked what the neighbor wanted, and the farmer replied that he had “all kinds of questions” about the project, how much it cost, and what kind of red tape was involved. The farmer recommended the program to his neighbor and gave him the coordinator’s contact details. “What did he say to that?” the coordinator asked. “He said he’d think about it,” replied the farmer. As we drove away, the coordinator explained that this neighbor was typical of a lot of people in the area. The locals were fiercely independent, and reluctant to work with anything that might involve government funding or agencies, but they were facing some significant land management problems. The program was designed to offer technical advice and some financial incentives through the catchment 182 Chapter 7 committee to solve some of these problems. The coordinator’s job was to make it as simple as possible for them. His approach was to let the work speak for itself. He never contacted landowners unless they contacted him, and he relied heavily on neighbors convincing neighbors that the program was worthwhile. This strategy meant that the program was slow to get going. But as word spread, there were more requests than funds, and the program was running at capacity.1 I heard this type of anecdote repeated by coordinators and landowners in Australia, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Tennessee. The literature on collaboration often describes the importance of social networks that can develop among the participants in a collaborative group, allowing them to communicate effectively, identify common goals, build trust, and seek consensus (Leach and Sabatier 2005). At the same time, social networks can serve as a means of translating the objectives of a collaborative into the broader community. These social networks are the friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances that people have developed through informal interaction in their communities and participation in groups. Collaboratives pursuing this strategy need to be composed of stakeholders who not only bring a range of perspectives to the table but also bring their network of contacts and relationships. This allows the collaborative to influence (and be influenced by) the broader community through these networks. What Are Social Networks? The idea of social networks and “social capital” has been popularized in books like Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. The argument that Putnam (2000) and others make is that communities not only possess physical capital (roads and infrastructure ), economic capital (investment and assets), and human capital (people and skills) but also social capital (interpersonal networks). An interpersonal network is composed of friends, associates, colleagues, and acquaintances. It is built through work relations, participation in religious organizations, neighborhood networks, social clubs, and other places where people interact with each other. Individuals can have extensive networks or limited ones. The network can be homogeneous, such as a farmer whose network consists only of other farmers. It can also be heterogeneous, such a farmer who has a diversity of acquaintances through participation in agricultural, social, religious, and political organizations. The implication for collaboration is that these are networks of trust and communication . These...

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