EMERGENT PERPLEXITY - IN SEARCH OF POST-NORMAL QUESTIONS FOR COMMUNITY AND AGROECOSYSTEM HEALTH

Growing awareness of the linkages between socioeconomic, ecological an d human community health across various spatial and temporal scales ha s uncovered contradictions and ambiguities in the concept of health. F urthermore, conventional modes of inquiry are limited in their ability to handle these difficulties and may, indeed, reinforce them. Based o n research into agroecosystems, and drawing on recent developments in our understanding of complex systems and what has been called post-nor mal science, a new type of question for health analysis is proposed. T he question ''Are the quality and quantity of internal and external re sources sufficient, and is their organization appropriate for the syst em to meet its goals?'' is implicitly integrative, context-sensitive, and attuned to emergent complexity. Unraveling the assumptions and imp lications of this question shifts the debate away from the causes of a particular disease to an exploration of the primary and operative goa ls inherent in the functioning of the system under investigation. It a lso becomes the basis for determining the roots of health problems and therefore pointing out what needs to be altered for improved health s tatus. Using examples from research into agroecosystem health, the pot ential contributions of this new approach to health analysis are explo red. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.