Emergent perplexity: in search of post-normal questions for community and agroecosystem health

Growing awareness of the linkages between socioeconomic, ecological and human community health across various spatial and temporal scales has uncovered contradictions and ambiguities in the concept of health. Furthermore, conventional modes of inquiry are limited in their ability to handle these difficulties and may, indeed, reinforce them. Based on research into agroecosystems, and drawing on recent developments in our understanding of complex systems and what has been called post-normal science, a new type of question for health analysis is proposed. The question "Are the quality and quantity of internal and external resources sufficient, and is their organization appropriate for the system to meet its goals?" is implicitly integrative, context-sensitive, and attuned to emergent complexity. Unraveling the assumptions and implications of this question shifts the debate away from the causes of a particular disease to an exploration of the primary and operative goals inherent in the functioning of the system under investigation. It also becomes the basis for determining the roots of health problems and therefore pointing out what needs to be altered for improved health status. Using examples from research into agroecosystem health, the potential contributions of this new approach to health analysis are explored.