Abstract:In line with the increasing calls for more transformative and transgressive learning in the context of sustainability studies, this article explores how encounters between different ontologies can lead to socio-ecological sustainability. With the dominant one-world universe increasingly being questioned by those who advocate the existence of many worlds-a so-called pluriverse-there lays the possibility of not only imagining other human-nature realities, but also engaging with them in practice. Moving towards an understanding of what happens when a multiplicity of worlds encounter one another, however, entails a sensitivity to the negotiations between often competing ontologies-or ontological politics. Based on an ethnographic methodology and narrative methods, data were collected from two consecutive intercultural gatherings called El Llamado de la Montaña (The Call of the Mountain), which take place for five days every year in different parts of Colombia. By actively participating in these gatherings of multiplicity, which address complex socio-ecological challenges such as food sovereignty and defence of territory, results show how encounters between different ontologies can result in transformative and potentially transgressive learning in terms of disrupting stubborn routines, norms and hegemonic powers which tend to accelerate unsustainability. Although we argue that a fundamental part of the wicked sustainability puzzle lies in supporting more relational ontologies, we note that such learning environments also lead to conflicts through inflexibility and (ab)use of power which must be addressed if sustained socio-ecological learning is to take place.

Abstract:Manioc is an important root crop in the tropics and the most important staple food in the Amazon. Manioc is diverse but its diversity has not yet been clearly associated with environmental or social factors. Our study evaluates how variation in edaphic environments and in social factors influences manioc diversity among five ethnic groups of the Amazon region of Colombia. Inventories of landraces, genetic analysis of manioc diversity, visits to farmers' swiddens and interviews with farmers were carried out during two years of field work. Morphotypic and genotypic diversity of manioc were large. The different ethnic groups of our study cultivate different sweet and bitter manioc landraces which they select and maintain in accordance with their ancestral rules and norms. Differences in available environments among indigenous communities (such as the presence of different soils) did not markedly affect manioc morphotypic or genotypic diversity, while social factors considerably influenced observed manioc diversity. Manioc diversity was explained by two parallel processes of manioc diversification: volunteer seedling selection and manioc seed OPEN ACCESS Diversity 2014, 6 793 exchange. We argue that, for a full understanding of manioc diversity, indigenous knowledge, as well as morphological and genetic variation should be taken into account.

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Legitimacy of environmental management and policies is an important topic in environmental research. Based on the notion of 'regimes of justification', we aim to analyse the dynamics in argumentations used to legitimize and de-legitimize Dutch nature conservation practices. Contrary to prior studies, we demonstrate how actors in two locations where environmental disputes arose showed little willingness to switch between arguments in order to reach a compromise. Instead, some actors constructed incompatibilities between arguments in order to delegitimize competing actors. Especially in the visioning phase, institutional actors emphasized technical efficiency, planning and global environmentalism, and arguments related to emotional accounts, inspiration and locality were de-legitimized. In the discussion, we argue that it is not the formal or informal inclusion of the actors in the process, but the construction of the legitimacy of their arguments that determines the inclusiveness and outcome of the process.

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We explore peasant territories as an emancipatory alternative in the context of authoritarian populism and neo-liberalism by focusing on two agroecological peasant territories in Brazil. We argue that territories harbour socio-ecological, cultural-political and politico-institutional bases that engender different forms of resistance and existence. Peasant territories build and defend emancipatory alternatives by creating self-governed knowledge and production systems, by problematising and mobilising against exploitative relations, and by transforming parts of the state. We conclude that peasant territories provide a basis for emancipatory transformation. What is more, they can be considered as emancipatory alternatives in themselves.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Indonesia, this article describes a conservation outreach project that attempts to educate and convert local people into coral protectors. Both coral and the sea-dwelling Bajau people appear to be amphibious beings, moving between a changeable land-water interface, and between different, fluidly interwoven ontological constellations. We show that the failure of conservation organizations to recognize the ontologically ambiguous nature of "coral" and "people" translates to a breakdown of outreach goals. Mobilizing the concept of amphibiousness to engage this ambiguity and fluidity, we describe the moving land-water interface as the actual living environment for both coral and people. The notion of amphibiousness, we suggest, has practical and political value, in particular for reconsidering outreach and how it may be reframed as a process involving ontological dialogue. For conservation outreach to become seaworthy, it needs to cultivate an amphibious capacity, capable of moving in-between and relating partly overflowing ways of knowing and being. Providing room for ambiguity, thinking with amphibiousness furthermore encourages suspension of the (Western) tendency to explain the Other, to fix what does not add up. As such, it is of heuristic relevance for the on-going discussions of ontological multiplicity that have proliferated at the intersection between STS and anthropology.

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