Assemblages and complex adaptive systems
A conceptual crossroads for integrative research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5696368 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin Spies (0000-0002-4009-0544, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, corresponding author), Henryk Alff (0000-0003-2577-0928, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 10 |
| Publication date | 2020-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geography Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1749-8198 • E-ISSN: 1749-8198 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/gec3.12534 |
| OpenAlex | W3037622195 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 77 |
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 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
Adaptive capacity · Climate change · Complex adaptive system · Conceptual framework · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Systems thinking · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance · Ecology
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| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,8 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |