Guillaumette Haughton

Emotions and Expertise in Environmental Policy Work

Environmental concerns are high on the political agenda in the current circumstances of climate change and uncertainty. Given the global nature of environmental issues, policy tends to be generated at a range of scales, and not always with coherence across these scales. This thesis asserts that for effective policy-work concerning environmental matters, there needs to be some way of drawing together efforts and concerns at these different scales. To begin this process, this thesis seeks to generate a better understanding of decision-making processes at local level, since this is the point at which physical outcomes of policy are generated. By understanding the factors that influence policy outcomes at this scale, we can start to understand the ways that different outcomes come about, and why they may be perceived to be successful or unsuccessful.

This study focuses particularly on the way in which flood alleviation policy is implemented at local scales, examining the decision-making processes that lead to change. The empirical study examines two case studies of flood alleviation sites in South Yorkshire: Centenary Riverside in Rotherham and Malin Bridge in Sheffield. The two sites were subject to decision-making processes concerning flood risk following the dramatic weather patterns of recent years, and led to structural changes to the sites. The case studies are developed primarily through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews.

By focussing on the themes that emerged from the data and the stories that were important to stakeholders a new perspective on the decision-making process emerges, which draws together a number of concepts that have not typically been considered in relation to one another. My findings suggests that the way in which expertise and knowledge are defined is significant in governing which contributions are seen as useful within the decision-making process. In traditional understandings of decision-making processes, which are still enshrined in the way policy is written to a large extent, professional expertise tends to be privileged above informal knowledge and the emotional drives that tend to accompany local relationships to place. However, in practice the distinction is much less clear, and emotions are a significant factor in the performance of the decision-making process, impacting on the relationships within the process and the outcomes of the process. This paper draws together the interaction of these concepts in the empirical work, and suggests some ways in which the findings from an examination at this site scale can be relevant to environmental policy work at much larger scales.

This PhD is a part of the EPSRC funded URSULA Project- Urban River Corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas www.Ursula.ac.uk.
My research is located in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield, supervised by Dr Steve Connelly(Department of Town and Regional Planning) and Susan Molyneux-Hodgson (Department of Sociological Studies). I am affiliated with the Science and Technology in Society (SATIS) network.

Conference Presentations

Haughton, Guillaumette. 2010. Emotions in the Management of River Corridors. Paper presented to the panel Revision of Rationality in Politics: Emotions at Stake at the 5th International Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference. Grenoble, June 2010.
Haughton, Guillaumette. 2010. Complexities of Positionality. Paper presented at the 5th International Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference. Grenoble, June 2010.
Haughton, Guillaumette. 2009. Power and expertise in the collaborative hegemony of river policy. Paper presented to the PERG Valuing Place session at the Royal Geographical Society Conference, Manchester, August 2009