It's Not Just Who You Know, but Can You Tell a Story? The Role of Narratives in Network Governance

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12188
• Author: R. Patrick Bixler
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Date: 01 March 2014

Book Reviews 277

R. Patrick Bixler recently received his

PhD from the Sociology Department at

Colorado State University, where he has

taught courses in environmental sociology.

He is currently a research fellow at the

Pinchot Institute for Conservation in

Washington, D.C. His main areas of study

include social networks in environmental

governance, community-based conserva-

tion, and social learning in collaborative

conservation. His current research focuses

on landscape conservation in the Crown of

the Continent.

E-mail: r.patrick.bixler@gmail.com

and Guattari 1987; Haraway 2008; Latour 2004).2

 is approach will further be elaborated throughout

this review.  e Power of Narrative in Environmental

Analysis makes an important contribution to this

conversation with the conceptual framework of the

narrative-network, and this contribution deserves

serious ref‌l ection among scholars who are interested

in environmental governance, planning, and policy

analysis.

 e intellectual contribution of this book is the

authors’ ability to give attention to the ways in which

stories or narratives undergird network connections

through a narrating and network-organizational dia-

lectic. In this sense, the “narrative enables the network

to form and function . . . is the underlying logic . . .

and the network understands itself through narrative,

and it represents itself through narration” (49–50). To

illustrate this, the book is divided into three sections.

 e f‌i rst three chapters provide a thorough theoretical

foundation on which the empirical chapters, chapters

4–6, are grounded.  e concluding chapter synthe-

sizes the empirical chapters to draw conclusions on

expanding ecological imaginations and coexisting in

heterogeneous networks.

A major underlying theme of the book is a meta-

narrative of coexistence. As the authors note, “Our

Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram,  e

Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2013). 225 pp. $44.00

(cloth), ISBN: 9780262019378, $22.00 (paper),

ISBN: 9780262519571.

Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram

have made multiple contributions to the f‌i eld

of environmental governance and policy over

the past two decades.1  eir collective scholarship has

highlighted the importance of place and local context,

the ef‌f ect of networks on knowing and management,

policy analysis, and analysis of environmental

conservation case studies across a variety of resource

sectors. In  e Power of Narrative in Environmental

Analysis, these authors make a timely contribution at

the intersection of two increasingly prevalent methods

to analyze environmental governance: social networks

and narrative. Many disciplinary and interdisciplinary

ef‌f orts are under way to understand networked

environmental governance in theory and in practice.

From a network perspective, these arrangements are

characterized by multiactor collaborations and a focus

on adaptability, knowledge, and learning. From a nar-

rative perspective, ef‌f orts to explain this governance

paradigm draw on a philosophy of relationality,

which is increasingly being labeled “assemblage

theory” (drawing from the philosophies of Deleuze

It’s Not Just Who You Know, but Can You Tell a Story?  e

Role of Narratives in Network Governance

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

R. Patrick Bixler

Colorado State University

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 2, pp. 277–280. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12188.