Lynne Westphal, Ph.D., U.S. Forest Service
In the RESTORE project, we investigated ecological restoration to see if differences in restoration groups’ decision-making process led to different ecological outcomes. IAD guided the data collection, and we used the grammar extensively, and, because of the data and setting, we used it in some new ways. Our application was to a value-adding environmental management action (as opposed to an extractive situation), and the data type — in-depth, qualitative interviews, and participant observation – was different than the policy documents typically analyzed with the grammar to that point. We also analyzed all types of institutional statements: rules, norms, and strategies. In this presentation, I will discuss the method we used to extract 1,700 institutional statements from interview data and some of the findings from our analyses. We had a few particularly interesting finds: norms (and not just rules) were particularly meaningful guides for people’s actions. We also found that sanctions do not only come from other people but can come from nonhuman nature.
