Systems mapping processes: How designing complexity fosters or inhibits the collective imagining of sustainable agri-food transformations

The multiple, interconnected crises that our frustrated societies are facing - including climate, energy, food, water and health crises - require a radical rethinking of what we mean by system transformations and how we imagine and steer them in just, resilient and sustainable directions with multiple societal groups. As academics engaged in knowledge production, cocreation and/or brokerage, we are agents in these crises and need to rethink our own role in addressing these issues (Chambers 2021; 2022). For a long time, one way for researchers and educators to engage in knowledge co-creation and/or brokerage has been through systems mapping, generally understood as a process of co-developing visual representations of interconnected sets of issues and actors (Sedlacko et al. 2014; Barbrook-Johnson and Penn 2022). However, we
still know little about when and how system mapping can support or hinder how social actors imagine and manage system transformations. In this study, we reflect on how researchers use systems mapping as an iterative, dialectical and participatory process to build common ground - in particular, awareness of shared visions, complementarities and points of antagonism - among societal actors across disciplines, geographies and scales (i.e. from local to international). In
order to do this, we reflect on the practices used in a number of recent European Union research and education projects that have mobilised a range of systems mapping approaches to the transformation of agri-food systems. These projects include our ongoing ENFASYS (”ENcouraging FArmers towards sustainable farming SYstems through policy and business Strategies”) project. In particular, we are reflecting on how convening, design and orchestration practices before, during and after systems mapping events contribute (or not) to common ground between societal actors. We invite researchers using systems mapping approaches in other projects seeking to support agri-food system transformation to engage and learn with us in addressing these questions.