Interdependence occurs when autonomous elements of a system interact, enabling the emergence of an overall system and its behavior. The humbling act of studying interdependence requires a shift from a reductionist world view that understands reality through its components. Instead, it holds that we can only understand reality by accounting for the whole and appreciating its components' mutual interaction. Studying the patterns that underlie interdependence can yield insights into causal dynamics revealing how structure can lead to innovation, novel system states, and problems resistant to intervention. In this dissertation, I present three studies to broaden the literature on how complex systems and systems thinking can unmask the structure and function of interdependence in place-based sustainability problems. In my first study, I examine the field of participatory modeling and use document citation and network analysis to reveal communities of practice in this field. By understanding the connections and communities of scholars in this work, I show the emergence of separate but related research fronts and how they diverge in their approach to participation and modeling. My next two studies are situated in Flint, MI, a community still responding to the water crisis's social-ecological disaster. These studies examine how a community can use systems thinking to elevate and target their positive change efforts. The second study explores how interdependent connections in the network governing the food system can explain the community's capacity to foster social learning, innovation, and adaptation. It uses the small-world network model to assess social-ecological resilience as a function of a network's clustering and density. My third study deals with system archetypes or system structures that produce characteristic patterns of problematic behavior due to the interdependence of components. Though system archetypes are a well-documented tool for communicating the structure and behavior of systems and have been applied across various contexts, their identification is often difficult. This study demonstrates an explicit process for identifying system archetypes. It uses a qualitative coding scheme adapted from Wolstenholme's (2003) definition of isometric archetypes to elicit structure and behavior from purposive text data generated from a community visioning process. This process increases the narrative's connectedness to the model, which can enhance the modeling process and give specific insights into systems thinking pedagogy and practice. Interdependence occurs when autonomous elements of a system interact, enabling the emergence of an overall system and its behavior. The humbling act of studying interdependence requires a shift from a reductionist world view that understands reality through its components. Instead, it holds that we can only understand reality by accounting for the whole and appreciating its components' mutual interaction. Studying the patterns that underlie interdependence can yield insights into causal dynamics revealing how structure can lead to innovation, novel system states, and problems resistant to intervention. In this dissertation, I present three studies to broaden the literature on how complex systems and systems thinking can unmask the structure and function of interdependence in place-based sustainability problems. In my first study, I examine the field of participatory modeling and use document citation and network analysis to reveal communities of practice in this field. By understanding the connections and communities of scholars in this work, I show the emergence of separate but related research fronts and how they diverge in their approach to participation and modeling. My next two studies are situated in Flint, MI, a community still responding to the water crisis's social-ecological disaster. These studies examine how a community can use systems thinking to elevate and target their positive change efforts. The second study explores how interdependent connections in the network governing the food system can explain the community's capacity to foster social learning, innovation, and adaptation. It uses the small-world network model to assess social-ecological resilience as a function of a network's clustering and density. My third study deals with system archetypes or system structures that produce characteristic patterns of problematic behavior due to the interdependence of components. Though system archetypes are a well-documented tool for communicating the structure and behavior of systems and have been applied across various contexts, their identification is often difficult. This study demonstrates an explicit process for identifying system archetypes. It uses a qualitative coding scheme adapted from Wolstenholme's (2003) definition of isometric archetypes to elicit structure and behavior from purposive text data generated from a community visioning process. This process increases the narrative's connectedness to the model, which can enhance the modeling process and give specific insights into systems thinking pedagogy and practice.
Read
