Remaking place relations for social‐ecological restoration: Reflections on placemaking in South Africa

Abstract Ecological restoration is an ongoing relational process involving interconnected reciprocal social and biophysical interactions that shift and change over time and space. Conceptual literature proposes that placemaking can deepen and enhance the understanding and implementation of social‐ecological restoration processes as part of broader sustainability transformation. However, there are still few empirical examples of the use of placemaking processes to enhance the transformative potential of restoration. South African landscapes could benefit from the potential transformative nature of placemaking and simultaneously provide a deeply challenging context for the implementation of social‐ecological restoration. We reflect on the potential value of placemaking by comparing two case studies in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The research was approached as a collaborative reflection on practice with Living Lands, a not‐for‐profit company that facilitates social‐ecological restoration using a relational approach in the Baviaanskloof and Langkloof. A realist case study approach was used to compare and relate the two contexts, based on context, mechanism and outcome configurations (CMOs) to explore what works, for whom, in what context and why. This involved assessing how the Living Lands teams applied and adapted their approach to each landscape, and the outcomes and experiences of the community members involved with Living Lands in each landscape. Data collection included qualitative methods (participant observations and interviews) and a review of secondary sources on the history and context of Living Lands' relationship with landscape communities. Data analysis was based on thematic coding aligned with abductive and retroductive inference. Findings describe (i) how Living Lands' approach engaged with placemaking, but in different ways in each landscape; (ii) the tensions Living Lands needed to navigate in terms of place relations; and (iii) how cultivating social relations and learning processes helped to buffer against setbacks and failures. To conclude, from a placemaking perspective, the resilience of social‐ecological restoration processes could require landscape‐based organizations and partnerships to continuously move through adaptive cycles of restructuring and changing relationships, requiring the ability to collaboratively learn, fail, reconcile and develop relational dimensions of social capital. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.