Hertz Tilman, Mancilla Garcia Maria
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Socio-Environmental Dynamics Research Group (SONYA), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles, Belgium.
Front Sociol. 2021 Oct 13;6:724751. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2021.724751. eCollection 2021.
Interest in causality is growing in sustainability science and it has been argued that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to account for the complexities of social-ecological dynamics. However, many of these approaches operate within perspectives that establish a separation between what has causal agency and all the rest, which is relegated to the role of background conditions. We argue that the distinction between causal elements and background conditions is by no means a necessary one, and that the causal agency of background conditions is worthy of investigation. We argue that such conditions correspond to what Karen Barad has called a "cut": a specific determination of the world (or part of it) respective to another part, for which it becomes intelligible. In this sense, most approaches to causality so far operate from "within" particular cuts. To illustrate this, we focus on the paradigmatic case of the Baltic cod collapse in the eighties. This case has been extensively studied, and overfishing has been identified as a key cause explaining the collapse. We dig deeper into the conditions which characterized fishing practices in the run-up to the collapse and uncover the separation between the social and the ecological that they enforce by encouraging policies to increase productivity under the rationale of national "development". We then re-examine the case from a process-relational perspective, rejecting the separation of nature from society. A process-relational perspective allows us to consider relations as constitutive of processes through which what exists becomes determinate. For this purpose we use the concepts of intra-action (co-constitution of processes) and of performativity (determination of language and matter within processes). We complete our conceptual framework by drawing inspiration from pragmatist philosophers and suggest that the concept of intuition can constitute an alternative to untangle causal dynamics and explain social-ecological phenomena beyond the cause/condition dichotomy. This article seeks to fulfil two objectives: firstly, to question the thick boundaries between conditions and causal elements that explain the processes in which social-ecological systems evolve; secondly, to provide a different approach to transforming a social-ecological system.
可持续性科学领域对因果关系的关注度日益提高，并且有人认为，需要多种方法来解释社会生态动态的复杂性。然而，这些方法中的许多都在这样的视角下运作，即它们在具有因果作用的因素和其他所有因素之间建立了一种分离，而其他所有因素则被归为背景条件的角色。我们认为，因果要素与背景条件之间的区分绝非必然，背景条件的因果作用值得研究。我们认为，这些条件对应于凯伦·巴拉德所称的“分割”：相对于世界的另一部分而言，对世界（或其一部分）的特定界定，由此它变得易于理解。从这个意义上说，迄今为止，大多数因果关系研究方法都是从特定的“分割”“内部”展开的。为了说明这一点，我们聚焦于20世纪80年代波罗的海鳕鱼数量锐减这一典型案例。该案例已得到广泛研究，过度捕捞被认定为导致鳕鱼数量锐减的关键原因。我们深入探究了鳕鱼数量锐减前夕渔业活动的特征条件，并揭示出它们通过在国家“发展”的名义下鼓励提高生产力的政策，所强化的社会与生态之间的分离。然后，我们从过程关系视角重新审视该案例，摒弃自然与社会的分离。过程关系视角使我们能够将关系视为过程的构成要素，通过这些过程，现存事物得以确定。为此，我们运用了“内作用”（过程的共同构成）和“能动性”（过程中语言与物质的确定）的概念。我们从实用主义哲学家那里汲取灵感，完善了我们的概念框架，并提出直觉概念可以成为一种替代方案，以理清因果动态关系，并解释超越因果/条件二分法的社会生态现象。本文旨在实现两个目标：其一，质疑那些解释社会生态系统演变过程的条件与因果要素之间的严格界限；其二，提供一种转变社会生态系统的不同方法。
