Stewardship
Last updated: Saturday, 7 December 2024
Responsibility, care, and management of resources on behalf of others. An ethical duty, but also a role, a stance, a disposition?
Origins in estate and household management. From stiward or stigweard, “one who has charge of the household or estate of another.” Connections to Judeo-Christian cosmology.
About managing resources, whether environmental, economic, cultural, or otherwise. Stewards do not own the resources but are temporary custodians or caretakers entrusted with their management, development, and preservation. Effective stewardship aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and regeneration of these resources, weighing present needs against future considerations.
Key features:
- Responsibility and care in managing something, often on behalf of others
- Serving a good or purpose beyond one’s own interests
- Fostering an inclusive, nurturing environment for growth
- Balancing short-term needs and long-term goals
A threshold of responsibility, and boundaries around what is being managed?
Stewardship implies a degree of control that may not always be available, especially working independently across institutions. The role of the steward is ambiguous in a context where there isn’t a clear institutional mandate or stable set of resources to manage, particularly when working across organisational and disciplinary boundaries.
In unstable, fast-changing contexts, it may be difficult to pin down what exactly you are stewarding (what body of knowledge, set of resources, or community) and on whose behalf. The object and community of stewardship may need to shift or evolve over time.
Traditional stewardship emerged in more hierarchical, role-bound societies. Recreating it in a more fluid, dynamic, networked context without those scripts and structures to fall back on requires active and sustained translation and adaptation.
- [?] When is stewardship the right framing and when might it fall short? Why does stewardship matter now? How might the concept have to evolve to meet the pressures and prevailing forces of the 2020s?
- [?] How can the responsibilities of stewardship be distributed and coordinated across diverse stakeholders, rather than inhering to a distinct, clearly-defined role?
- [?] How do the specific resources being stewarded (financial, environmental, cultural, etc.) shape the stewardship dynamic?
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