Valuation in Rural Social Innovation Processes—Analysing Micro-Impact of a Collaborative Community in Southern Italy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is compelling and well-written. The focus on the link valuation-social innovation is very clever. Theory and research are closely connected.

Since the paper gives a key role to events and face-to-face interaction, it should ackwnoledge the role of rituals (see the work of Randal Collins). For instance: "Within this network of people, projects and places, we were able to identify moments and processes of valuation such as events and encounters. These were important for the community to grow, build ties and relations with other groups, become more stable and creating a bigger outreach"

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for engaging with our paper and providing constructive feedback to it. The comment on the potential role of rituals helped us to rethink about moments of valuation in particular.

Our research stresses the importance and relevance of moments of valuation embedded in ongoing collaborative processes as (key) events stand out as staged forms of making valuation processes visible. However, these staged moments actually are important sparks in a complex web of valuation processes, marking highlights and contributing to the diffusion of valued ideas and innovative practices. From how we understand Randal Collins this might contribute to understanding interactions as cultural capital that also create a sense of belonging to a particular community. Therefore we added following paragraph in the discussion section: “Conceptually, we departed from moments and processes of valuation. Against this backdrop, we understand moments as situations that are spatially and temporarily lo-catable. We do find quite numerous events across the three valuation phases uncovered by our research. Some moments even became routinized as regularly reoccurring events pointing towards establishing rituals where interactions (such as in the annual open oven events) contribute to building up cultural capital that also creates a sense of belonging to a particular community and place. [71]”

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is consistent regarding the coherence between the purpose and the methods applied. However, there are many reiterative paragraphs. At the same time, there should be a more internal structure. Despite the paper being well divided into sections and subsections, the internal discourse seems very reiterative. It talks about the same in many parts, indistinctively of the section. The latter prevents a complete comprehension of the findings.
It is surprising that the word economy rarely appears, whereas some of the literature used is based on socioeconomic studies. In this sense, a more integrative approach would include the economy as another domain closely linked to the social domain (or, perhaps, the economy domain is taken for granted in the social domain in this paper; in this case, it should be said).
The paper would provide a more precise understanding if valuation terms and concepts were clearly defined.
Finally, considering that rural development studies have been a prolific field of research, this background should be considered as the starting point.

Author Response

Thank you very much for engaging with our paper and providing constructive feedback to it. It helped us to better shape our paper in terms of context, argumentation, result presentation as well as engaging with secondary literature.

 

Comment: The paper is consistent regarding the coherence between the purpose and the methods applied. However, there are many reiterative paragraphs. At the same time, there should be a more internal structure. Despite the paper being well divided into sections and subsections, the internal discourse seems very reiterative. It talks about the same in many parts, indistinctively of the section. The latter prevents a complete comprehension of the findings.

Reply:

Thank you very much for underlining that we should improve our internal structure and avoid reiterative paragraphs. We now clarify our arguments in the text concerning the valuation context, the valuation phases with related valuation practices, as well as the three areas of micro-impacts of social innovations. Doing so we primarily focused on restructuring our result presentation where we well understood the reviewers concern about the internal structure. We re-shaped the argumentation with following adjustments:

• To disentangle context from the result presentation, we moved the revised case description to the research design section. Furthermore, we refined the case study description focusing more on the socially innovative regional context of our research.
• We now open the result presentation with a sub-section (4.1) that highlights what we regard as one of our central takeaways from the empirical findings. Here we elaborate the valuation context in which the social innovation processes unfold. From our perspective, this at the one hand side provides a better understanding of valuation context and on the other hand sider explains how the constant confrontation with rural development and agricultural food production and consumption functions as an important basis for further processes of collaborative valuation practices for the rural community.
• In now sub-section 4.2 we then focus on the three valuation phases that we reconstructed from our empirical material.
• We also strengthened the internal division of the result presentation in section 4.2. Each of the three valuation phases is briefly introduced and described with a short paragraph. We then move on to provide empirical examples from our fieldwork. The support a better orientation for the reader, we highlighted in bold what the empirical results exemplify. The presentation of results first focuses on how valuation addresses the critical debate on the agro-economic system. We then move on to demonstrate how this relates to socio-cultural processes as well as to place-making strategies. We then conclude each valuation phase by relating back to our conceptual framing underlining moments and processes of valuation.

 

Comment: It is surprising that the word economy rarely appears, whereas some of the literature used is based on socioeconomic studies. In this sense, a more integrative approach would include the economy as another domain closely linked to the social domain (or, perhaps, the economy domain is taken for granted in the social domain in this paper; in this case, it should be said).

Reply:

Thank you very much for sensitising us to this short-coming in our argumentation. We have now made it clear in the introduction: “Though embedded in economic processes of agricultural food production this perspective also helps us to understand rural development not as a merely economic processes, but instead as one that involves the collective development of social and cultural value which considers economic activities as embedded in social relation. Furthermore, this perspective also allows for better understanding, how collective valuation practises may contribute to community empowerment which eventually also fosters rural development beyond economic means, but nevertheless may partially feed back into economic activities.”

By reshaping the result presentation (see comments above) we furthermore aimed at illustrating how the multiple ways of collaboratively engaging with the predominant agro-economic system leads to outcomes that reach far beyond economic activities and contribute to socio-cultural rural development and collaborative place-making practices.

 

Comment: The paper would provide a more precise understanding if valuation terms and concepts were clearly defined.

Reply:

Thank you for this important aspect in our conceptual argumentation. This helped us to better explain our research perspective and fed into preparing the research design.

We addressed this comment be summing up section “2.2 Valuation as a collaborative socio-spatial practice” by condensing above discussions on valuation in two valuation perspectives applied in our research, namely moments and processes of valuation. For both we provide a definition that we the take up in the presentation of our findings too. The concluding paragraph of each valuation phase relates to those definition. Finally, section 5 “Discussion and conclusion” also takes up the conceptual perspectives on moments and processes of valuation in it reflection. We first inserted a summarising table that links the three valuation phases with moments and processes of valuation. Secondly, we reflect of the conceptual framing by adding a discussing paragraph too: “Conceptually, we departed from moments and processes of valuation. Against this backdrop, we understand moments as situations that are spatially temporarily locatable. Even though some literatures stress the importance of moments in innovative and creative processes [11, 12, 44, 64-66], our empirical investigation suggests a rather procedural perspective. This is amplified particularly in the valuation phase of “symbolic capital accumulation and recognition of actions”. Here, key events such as the TedX talk or a documentary premiere stand out as staged forms of making valuation processes visible. However, these staged moments actually are important sparks in a complex web of valuation processes, marking highlights and contributing to the diffusion of valued ideas and innovative practices. However, what we predominantly uncovered are long lasting micro-processes of socially interactive forms of collective practices that shape and affect valuation. This at the one hand confirms Waible et al.’s [13] claim to be sensible for valuation moments across social fields, but, on the other hand, also stresses to take into account the numerous micro-processes that shape collective valuation.”

With this approach we aimed at creating a constant thread and argument across the whole paper that also reflects on conceptual contributions.

 

Comment: Finally, considering that rural development studies have been a prolific field of research, this background should be considered as the starting point

Reply:

Thank you for this suggestion. By re-framing the section 4.1 to “Re-signification of the dominant rural development paradigm as valuation context” we place the social innovation and valuation process described in our case study within a more holistic rural development paradigm in which certain aspects (such as the agro-economic system, the socio-cultural processes and the place-making) are impacted by the valuation phases.

Moreover, we now directly emphasise the connection of our work with other rural development studies by citing some relevant academic works in the introduction. In particular, studies working on the topic of local food systems and their role for rural community development as well as the case of how networks/communities of collaborative agriculture reflect and negotiate their values to shape their common identity and create impact at the local and regional level.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic is particularly relevant, as it is essential to fill it with new or innovative content during the development of rural areas, which requires an innovative way of thinking. Almost nowhere can the countryside be separated from agriculture and food production. The main topic of the article is to introduce collaborative moments and processes of valuation are embedded in social innovation processes. And it is an agricultural socially innovative initiatives of a rural collaborative community in southern Italy. During the analysis the researchers used several qualitative research methods such as ethnographic interviews, participatory observations, as well as active involvement in collaborative agricultural practices. The chosen methods are suitable for carrying out the desired research and analysing the presented results. My only doubt is how objective participant observation could be, where the observer is already a member of the community. In this situation, I feel the researcher is more like a test subject, like all the other interviewees who shared their opinion.

Although the article is basically based on interviews, I would suggest that you present the results in a more structured way, giving a summary of the total number of people, their roles and how they were involved in the study. To make it clear: let's work a little with numbers.

For me, the two most exciting findings are:

1.     what is mentioned in the conclusion part as well: ’Critically analysing the dominant agricultural paradigm, for example, does not lead to the development of alternatives that are detached from it. Rather, the active and ongoing confrontation with it leads to the creation of solutions that are embedded in the existing system and at the same time attempt to change it’

2.     Discussion about the changed meanings of terms like ’borghi’ or the name ’Resilience’

Author Response

Thank you very much for engaging with our paper and providing constructive feedback to it. It helped us to better shape our research design and method presentation as well as to improve our result section.

Comment: The topic is particularly relevant, as it is essential to fill it with new or innovative content during the development of rural areas, which requires an innovative way of thinking. Almost nowhere can the countryside be separated from agriculture and food production. The main topic of the article is to introduce collaborative moments and processes of valuation are embedded in social innovation processes. And it is an agricultural socially innovative initiatives of a rural collaborative community in southern Italy. During the analysis the researchers used several qualitative research methods such as ethnographic interviews, participatory observations, as well as active involvement in collaborative agricultural practices. The chosen methods are suitable for carrying out the desired research and analysing the presented results. My only doubt is how objective participant observation could be, where the observer is already a member of the community. In this situation, I feel the researcher is more like a test subject, like all the other interviewees who shared their opinion.

Reply:

Thank you for the relevant suggestion. In the research design section, a paragraph has been added to better explain the position of the researcher. As in other ethnographic studies, being a member is integral part of the field strategy, but this does not necessarily involves becoming an insider with a biased perspective. Furthermore, we would like to clarify that the first author became a WWOOF member explicitly to implement the research, and she was not a member of this community before. There could be possible limitation of being culturally and socially involved, but those are now reflected in the research design. Finally, we addressed a potential biased perspective by collaboratively interpreting the results. The second author did not become a member of the WWOOF network, neither was directly engaged in the Italian fieldwork. Therefore, she provided a more distanced perspective that helped to circumvent a potential single-sided interpretation.

We stressed this methodological approach by adding an explaining paragraph in the research design, also including references to methodological literatures: “Becoming a WWOOF member was an important strategy for accessing the field and investigating the internal dynamics of the community. The membership was rather passive and did not include becoming a fully engaged insider. Instead, this strategic membership created a contact zone between the field of investigation and the researcher. This strategy also implied reflecting consciously the researcher’s role in the field as well as her own feelings and experiences. [55] For instance, throughout the research process the re-searchers had to disentangle their own positions with their respective possibly convergent, dissonant, or questionable value systems with regard to the emerging valuation practices in the field. We tried to minimise possible subjectivation of this personal involvement by collaboratively interpreting the case study’s findings. While one author was actively engaged in the fieldwork, the other was more distanced to the field which enabled us to apply and insider and outsider perspective on datasets, thus assuring a balance between possible dilemmas generated from the (cultural and social) familiarisation [56] with the research subject.”

 

Comment: Although the article is basically based on interviews, I would suggest that you present the results in a more structured way, giving a summary of the total number of people, their roles and how they were involved in the study. To make it clear: let's work a little with numbers.

Reply:

Your comment gave us the opportunity to be more precise in our research design section, in particular under “Data collection and analysis”. A more precise description (and enumeration) of the conducted interviews as well as a clearer explanation of the time spent on the field has now been implemented in the research design section. Here we highlight that three fieldwork phases (getting to know the field, actual work as WWOOFer at the farm, and further data gathering through participation to some events) have been conducted on site. In terms of participants, we state that ten people have been interviewed with different methods (semi-structured interviews, oral histories) while other exchanges have been collected through field notes.

Besides better elaborating on the research design, we also worked on a more structured way of presenting our research results. We re-shaped the argumentation with following adjustments:

• To disentangle context from the result presentation, we moved the revised case description to the research design section. Furthermore, we refined the case study description focusing more on the socially innovative regional context of our research.
• We now open the result presentation with a sub-section (4.1) that highlights what we regard as one of our central takeaways from the empirical findings. Here we elaborate the valuation context in which the social innovation processes unfold. From our perspective, this at the one hand side provides a better understanding of valuation context and on the other hand sider explains how the constant confrontation with rural development and agricultural food production and consumption functions as an important basis for further micro-processes of collaborative valuation practices for the rural community.
• In now sub-section 4.2 we then focus on the three valuation phases that we reconstructed from our empirical material.
• We also strengthened the internal division of the result presentation in section 4.2. Each of the three valuation phases is briefly introduced and described with a short paragraph. We then move on to provide empirical examples from our fieldwork. The support a better orientation for the reader, we highlighted in bold what the empirical results exemplify. The presentation of results first focuses on how valuation addresses the critical debate on the agro-economic system. We then move on to demonstrate how this relates to socio-cultural processes as well as to place-making strategies. We then conclude each valuation phase by relating back to our conceptual framing underlining moments and processes of valuation.