A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations

Abstract

In sustainability science, revising the paradigms that separate humans from nature is considered a powerful 'leverage point' in pursuit of transformations. The coupled socialecological and human-environment systems perspectives at the heart of sustainability science have, in many ways, enhanced recognition across academic, civil, policy and business spheres that humans and nature are inextricably connected. However, in retaining substantialist assumptions where 'social' and 'ecological' refer to different classes of entity that interact, coupled systems perspectives insist on the inextricability of humans and nature in theory, while requiring researchers to extricate them in practice-thus inadvertently reproducing the separation they seek to repair. Consequently, sustainability researchers are increasingly drawing on scholarship from the 'relational turn' in the humanities and the social sciences to propose a paradigm shift for sustainability science: away from focusing on interactions between entities, towards emphasizing continually unfolding processes and relations. Yet there remains widespread uncertainty about the origins, promises and challenges of using relational approaches. In this paper, we identify four themes in relational thinking-continually unfolding processes; embodied experience; reconstructing language and concepts; and ethics/practices of care-and highlight the ways in which these are being drawn on in sustainability science. We conclude by critically discussing how relational approaches might contribute to (i) a paradigm shift in sustainability science, and (ii) transformations towards sustainability. Relational approaches foster more dynamic, holistic accounts of human-nature connectedness; more situated and diverse knowledges for decision-making; and new domains and methods of intervention that nurture relationships in place and practice.

Putting relational thinking to work in sustainability science – reply to Raymond et al.

“…Relational thinking provides resources to re-work and re-think conventional research practices and residual, often difficultto-detect modernist assumptions. We have found relational thinking useful in our own (un)learning towards better comprehension of complexity and, notably, so have many of the citizens, communities, practitioners, scientists and policy-makers we have worked with (West et al 2020). Many of these actors have a much better grasp of relationality and complexity than we do.…”

“…We thank Raymond et al (2021) for their attentive engagement with our paper (West et al 2020), and welcome critical discussions around relational thinking in sustainability science. We begin by clarifying that our 'target audience' for the value of relational thinking is all those who are interested in the study of complex sustainability issues, not only those who adopt 'dynamical systems' approaches (Raymond et al 2021, p. 2).…”

“…Through careful negotiation, it might be decided that 'new' concepts need to be built, specific to the relations constituting the phenomenon in question. Or it might be decided that existing concepts are helpful (see Boxes 1-4 in West et al 2020). In 'purely' relational approaches, these concepts would be developed with particular attention to their abilities to effectively mobilize relations, and in the latter case would likely emerge at least partly from existing relational theories.…”

Urban gardening as a means for fostering embodied urban human–food connection? A case study on urban vegetable gardens in Germany

“…To capture what it means to be connected to nature, current research in this field has emphasized the need to develop a multidimensional understanding of HNC, taking into account different internal human cognitive or affective responses about and towards nonhuman nature (Hatty et al 2020;Tam 2013;Whitburn et al 2019). However, to further overcome the human-nonhuman, mind-matter and subject-object dichotomies that obfuscate integrated forms of sustainability research and practice, there have been calls for more relational forms of sustainability research that integrate internal and external relationships with nature (Walsh et al 2021;West et al 2020). Indeed, the recent scholarship has emphasised the need for an embodied HNC approach that conceptualises HNC as an interplay between internal and external human and nonhuman nature including mind, body, environment and culture (Colding et al 2020;Cooke et al 2016;Raymond et al 2017).…”

“…Bivariate correlations with sociodemographic data show positive but weak significant correlations between the length of patch rental and food consciousness (r = 0.15, p < 0.05) and food harvesting (r = 0.20, p < 0.01). These findings can be discussed through the lens of sense of place as embodied experience (West et al 2020), describing relationships between individuals and their specific environments (e.g. Giuliani and Feldman 1993;Raymond et al 2010).…”