https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8463-9853
![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This study documents how urban desert farmers make sense of their organizational decisions as sustainable. This study collected interviews with urban desert farmers located in one metropolitan area in the southwestern United States. By employing a sensemaking theoretical framework, data analysis revealed two occupational Discourses (i.e. economic sustainability and environmental sustainability) in tension that were used to retrospectively rationalize farming decisions as sustainable. These sustainability claims were contextualized by gathering data on material sustainability practices through farm soil samples. As a result of the contradictions among sustainability claims and practices, this study presents the concept of irrational rationality—a discursive practice that blends decisional sensemaking and sensegiving about organizational members’ preferred definition of organizational reality. Analysis revealed that urban farmers utilized irrational rationality to both reduce cognitive dissonance created by material and discursive constraints on sustainability as well to establish a positive identity defense mechanism.
Acknowledgements
Our research team would like to thank Dr. Carrisa Hoelscher in providing feedback on early versions of this manuscript. Her insights were integral to the development of the theoretical and practical contributions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The urban farms within this study are located within the unceded homelands of the Tohono O'odham, Akimel O'otham, and Pee-Posh peoples, whose care and keeping of the land enabled current urban farmers to practice agriculture. We acknowledge the sovereignty of these nations.