Transcript
Page 1
In spray diagramming choosing your central theme is important. ‘Competing needs for water’ seemed like a particularly important topic to structure my understanding of the WWP from the summary. Once I’d chosen my central theme, I circled it.
Page 2
Constructing a spray diagram helps you understand the central theme in a systemic way. On reading about the South African WWP experience, three sub-themes of sustainability came to mind in relation to water conflicts. These were; the economic dimensions, the social and political dimensions, and the ecological dimensions.
Page 3
It’s often useful to keep track of your main sub-themes by putting a circle around them. Focusing on each of the three sub-themes in turn, more spray effects were made by creating primary branches of each theme. The associations you make can be of different types. These could be influences, causes, or any other type of relationship or link that you think appropriate. It might be useful to include short quotations from the text or argument being analysed.
After creating the primary or direct branches from each sub-theme, I decided to branch out further to form secondary sub-branches, and further still forming sub-sub branches.
There is of course a risk of continuing too far with the spraying effect. The idea is to continue until further branching into more specific areas is no longer useful for your purposes.
Page 4
Some of the elements of one branch might relate specifically to elements of another branch. For example, the invasive species, whilst being ecologically damaging, are also economically useful and this clearly relates to water for economic development.
Similarly, the generation of employment opportunities is related to the economic and socio-political dimensions of water. I’ve only made links between elements from different branches where I consider them to be important. Too many cross linkages will result in a diagram that lacks clarity.
Page 5
Its crucially important that the headings are all inter-connected through the common theme of 'competing needs for water'. So, looking at this diagram, the WWP does not view the cutting down of invasive species as the sole solution to the original problem. The programme’s response to the ecological damage appears to be quite systemic. It addresses the various economic, ecological and political dimensions of water needs together.
Page 6
Looking at the final diagram, if you had to describe WWP to someone unfamiliar with the programme what structural features would you emphasise? Which structural features aren’t represented well enough on the diagram? How might you improve it?
Summary
Start with a key idea and circle it.
Identify the sub-topics that are directly related to the central topic.
Circle the key sub-topics and link them to the main topic with lines.
Identify issues related to the sub-topics and link them with the sub-topic with lines.
Build up the sub-branches as far as you think is useful.