Adopting process-relational perspectives to tackle the challenges of social-ecological systems research

Abstract

Despite many recent advances in sustainability science, researchers still struggle to address the key characteristics of social-ecological systems that underlie many of today's problems. Complex cross-scale dynamics and tightly interrelated social and ecological processes characterize social-ecological systems (SES). These features lead to constant change and novelty. Process philosophers argue that the difficulties of capturing these features may have their roots in our tendency to understand the world in terms of substances. This tendency is a legacy of dominant philosophical views that, although now debunked, continue to inform (albeit mostly implicitly) our explanations of reality. These philosophical views are based on the primacy of fundamental entities and stability, which is in contradiction to the continuously changing nature of SES. In this paper, we demonstrate that adopting a processrelational perspective, which focuses on nonequilibrium dynamics and relations between processes, provides novel opportunities to advance SES research. We propose concrete steps toward developing a process-relational perspective of SES and discuss how such a perspective can help us to overcome the challenges currently facing SES research.

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

“…Bringing together the quantitative, spatial emphasis of network analysis with the conceptual development of the latter studies is a promising research pathway for sustainability science (Lejano 2019;Sayles et al 2019). The work of Mancilla Garcia et al (2020aGarcia et al ( , 2020b and Hertz et al (2020) to articulate a process-relational approach to complex systems research provides a rich conceptual basis for such efforts, with the potential to contribute significantly to research priorities around human-nature connectedness, complex dynamics, and issues of scale.…”

“…Sustainability scientists are therefore increasingly engaging with research associated with the 'relational turn' in the humanities and social sciences, as a means of revising substantialist assumptions and better capturing the complexity of human-nature connectedness (Darnhofer et al 2016;Gillard et al 2016;Stenseke 2018;West et al 2018West et al , 2019bLejano 2019;Hertz et al 2020;Darnhofer 2020;Walsh et al 2020;Mancilla Garcia et al 2020a, 2020b. The relational turn does not refer to a single, unified approach, but rather describes a broad shift in scholarship across multiple disciplines, encompassing many distinct commitments, theories and ideas (e.g.…”

The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions

“…This in turn might make it difficult for other phenomena, unrelated or opposite to optimization, for example, to materialize. For instance, under a perspective of optimization it might be impossible to perform cultural or spiritual meanings (Mancilla García et al, 2020). Our reading of Barad's statement "Discourse is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said.…”

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

“…For example, through such negotiations it might become apparent that concepts of 'levering change' embody assumptions that are different to those contained in 'continually unfolding processes,' in which case participants might revise their understandings of either of these concepts or generate new provisionally useful concepts to tackle the challenge at hand. Mancilla Garcia et al (2020aGarcia et al ( , 2020b, Hertz et al (2020) and Schlüter et al (2020) describe this kind of approach to working with relational and socialecological systems concepts.…”