5.4 Contribution and Future Research While previous studies have proposed models to articulate the relationship between people and the place in which people live (like those reviewed in section 1.3 Chapter 1: relational geographic framework to integrate theory and practice in ecosystem management (D. R. Williams & Patterson, 1996), three-pole model for mapping the meaning of place (Gustafson, 2001), and the meaning-mediated model for integrating environmental factors with sense of place (Stedman, 2003)), the framework presented in this chapter represents the relationship by way of a systematic comprehension of two deep and abstract notions: the meaning of water and sense of place in the context of human development. Within the context of local communities, it foregrounds a local reciprocal relationship between these notions: sense of place can evoke or ignore meaning of water, and vice versa, and be consistent with the interaction between people, physical settings, and water as a part of place. This relationship corresponds to livelihood and economic well-being reliant on the ecological condition of water and place which together connect with society, culture, and politics. The other prominent features of this framework are vulnerabilities and leadership, the former influencing the loss of sense of place and meaning of water, and the latter having potential to recover this loss and construct social unity in the protection of water and place. They reveal, respectively, critical processes of problematic phenomena and alternative solutions in local communities due to the dynamic nature of relationships. This new understanding provides a holistic and systematic perspective which may be essential in an academic discourse to articulate the relationship between people and place including water. Policy makers or environmental managers may also apply this model to suggest an alternative policy or plan natural resources management in local communities, thereby developing the competencies of leadership in local communities.
However, this framework is context-oriented. It can be applied in other similar contexts to those where it was derived, or where people rely on water and forest; contexts in which interaction between people, water, and place has been changed by internal and external forces; and where leadership predominates. In addition, the systematic research process applied during the course of this work, being constrained by a three-year time frame, did not allow this practical framework to be more generalised. Further research requires a systematic research process which leads to theoretical saturation. I suggest focusing on the verification of this framework using a similar methodology to that employed here, but the areas for study must provide different settings, phenomena, or circumstances where people interact differently with water and place, and where such a focus might produce tangible and beneficial outcomes. These settings could be in rural remote or indigenous communities in which social cohesion and a belief system predominate, where socioeconomic status is low, where infrastructure and development are limited, where
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water and natural resources are problematic, where leadership is weak, where access to external organisations is difficult, and where political issues or conflicts are critical. An urban setting to be considered could have economic growth and development predominating where a socio-cultural base and leadership are weak, where acceptable governance and management predominate, and where livelihoods are dependent upon modernisation and capitalism.