Sustaining Livelihoods through Organic Agriculture in Tanzania - UMB

and reflection with practical solutions that fit the views and interests of those involved
as well as possible. It is particularly attractive in dealing with agriculture as a complex
and purposeful activity (Remenyi, 1987).
Whereas a system can be conceived as an ‘adaptive whole’, a ‘soft system’ concerns
social actors, their activities and relationships, constructed by connecting sets of
activities to make a purposeful whole, or ‘human activity system’ (Engel & Salomon,
1997). In other words, a soft system is a system that has been assigned a purpose. It is
important to emphasise the appreciative nature of soft systems, i.e. the possibility for
different systemic images and therefore systemic images are ‘windows’ on the world
rather than representations of the world.
SSM is often chosen as a way of understanding and intervening in complex
innovation theatres where stakeholders have radically different perceptions (such as in
an organic sector comprising farmers, traders, policy makers and development
partners) since it enables the recognition of different but equally relevant worldviews.
The methodological approach is to follow a learning system or action researching
system comprised of key actors and the researcher going through sequential learning
cycles of planning, action, observation, reflection, planning, action, etc. (see diagram
below).
REFLECT
Research as an action-learning cycle
PLAN
OBSERVE
ACT
In SSM the world is considered problematic but the process of enquiry is systematic.
When the goals of a system are obscure and/or changeable, such as in the rapidly
evolving Tanzanian organic sector, SSM can be applied for the identification of
further research needs which may require soft or hard systems thinking, technology
development or basic science. Thus SSM can be located within a spectrum of
approaches from hard (e.g. cropping systems research) to ‘soft systems in which
objectives are hard to define, decision-taking is uncertain, measures of performance
are at best qualitative and human behaviour is irrational’ (Checkland, 1981: quoted in
Remenyi, 1987: 38). This has been illustrated in the Hawkesbury hierarchy of
methodologies for researching problems of increasing complexity (see diagram
below).
22