Abstract
This chapter introduces community-based system dynamics (CBSD), its underlying motivations, and some key concepts. Central to this argument is the idea that communities need to be involved to both inform a better understanding of the underlying system and create the support for implementing recommendations based on system models. The chapter then outlines the ways that problems can be complex and resists solutions and how causal maps and formal models with computer simulation can help improve our mental models. Participation is then defined as a process within the context of CBSD.
Logical pictures can depict the world.
(Wittgenstein 1974, 10)
Today’s knowledge about something is not necessarily the same tomorrow. Knowledge is changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes. Then theory also does the same. It’s not something stabilized, immobilized.
(Horton and Freire 1990, 101)
One way to focus on this problem is to discover that we have no conception of objectivity that enables us to distinguish the scientifically ‘best descriptions and explanations’ from those that fit most closely (intentionally or not) with the assumptions that elites in the West do not want critically examined.
(Harding 1991, 97)
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Notes
- 1.
It is important to note that this lag between results and policy implementation is by no means unique to system dynamics. In fact, it is common in many areas of scientific research with whole new fields emerging such as translational science and implementation science to address this lag.
- 2.
Some have characterized the approach as better described as community driven, while others would see this fitting under the umbrella term of community-engaged research, but neither of these emphasize the importance of basing activities in a community in a way that facilitates accumulation over time. Hence, I prefer the term “community based,” and it is consistent with the common usage of a community-based participatory research (Minkler and Wallerstein 2008).
- 3.
The earliest articulation of this appeared in Hovmand et al. (2008) with work funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-0724577) and the Missouri Transformation Project, funded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration Mental Health Transformation State Incentive Grant (McFarland, Chair; Goon, Co-Chair; SM57474- 01).
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Hovmand, P.S. (2014). Introduction to Community-Based System Dynamics. In: Community Based System Dynamics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8763-0_1
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