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Assemblages and complex adaptive systems: A conceptual crossroads for integrative research?

  • In human geography and beyond, assemblage thinking has increasingly gained attention as a perspective from which to investigate the emergence and dynamics of more-than-human entanglements. Similarly, in the interdisciplinary field of social-ecological systems analysis, theories of complex adaptive systems have been employed to investigate how social and ecological dynamics and actors interact with each other on different scales. Nonetheless, despite the success of these conceptual perspectives in their respective research fields, there have been few attempts so far to bring these theoretical strands together to explore their common ground and investigate how they could cross-fertilize each other. This contribution seeks to address this gap, by investigating the ontological compatibility of these two approaches and exploring the potential for meaningful syntheses that could be utilized for integrative research—combining perspectives, approaches, and methods taken from social and environmental sciences for the analysis ofIn human geography and beyond, assemblage thinking has increasingly gained attention as a perspective from which to investigate the emergence and dynamics of more-than-human entanglements. Similarly, in the interdisciplinary field of social-ecological systems analysis, theories of complex adaptive systems have been employed to investigate how social and ecological dynamics and actors interact with each other on different scales. Nonetheless, despite the success of these conceptual perspectives in their respective research fields, there have been few attempts so far to bring these theoretical strands together to explore their common ground and investigate how they could cross-fertilize each other. This contribution seeks to address this gap, by investigating the ontological compatibility of these two approaches and exploring the potential for meaningful syntheses that could be utilized for integrative research—combining perspectives, approaches, and methods taken from social and environmental sciences for the analysis of human-environmental relations. Based on a comparative discussion of four selected “guiding principles” found in assemblage thinking and complex adaptive systems, namely, socio-nature, emergence/historicity, relationality, and self-organization, we find not only significant common ground between the two perspectives but also discrepancies that may be utilized for cross-fertilization. In particular, we argue complex adaptive systems would benefit from a deeper engagement with society-nature theorizations found in the assemblage literature, while assemblage thinking could borrow from complex adaptive systems to broaden its conception of how elements relate to and co-function with each other.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author:Michael SpiesORCiDGND, Henryk AlffORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-2319
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12534
ISSN:1749-8198
Parent Title (English):Geography Compass
Publisher:Wiley
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2020
Date of Publication (online):2022/05/24
Date of first Publication:2020/06/25
Publishing Institution:Hochschule für nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde
Release Date:2022/05/24
Tag:historicity; more-than-human social theory; relationality; social-ecological systems; socio-natures
Volume:2020
Issue:14
Article Number:e12534
Page Number:13
Institutions / Departments:Fachbereich Wald und Umwelt / Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Management
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften
9 Geschichte und Geografie / 91 Geografie, Reisen
open_access (DINI-Set):open_access
Funding by the HNEE:Projekt DEAL
University Bibliography:University Bibliography
Zweitveröffentlichung
Peer-Review / Referiert
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
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