Abstract
Sustainability and resilience are most often thought of as systems concepts that evaluate the state and function of objects of interest as well as the system as a whole. In this article, we shift the focus toward the “space in between”—i.e., the relationships among objects in the system. The article develops the concept of relationality, which provides a new lens to understanding what social and material processes drive or impede the functioning and sustainability of a social–ecological system (SES). Relationality seeks to understand a system not so much as a set of interacting objects but a web of relationships. By foregrounding relationships, we are better able to understand the rich ground of practice that guides a system in ways that the formal rational designs do not explain. Several examples are drawn from the literature that suggests how a relational analysis might proceed and what social–ecological phenomena we can better explain by this means. The article ends with a note on how the promise of relational analyses also bears in it its challenges.
Highlights
In describing his intellectual and methodological approach, the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu suggested that students shift their focus from studying the traditional objects of investigation to studying the spaces in between them [1]
We begin with a rudimentary definition of relationality, which is an analytical framework wherein the primary focus is on the relationships between an individual and other individuals in a socio-ecosystem, and the system is understood not so much as a collection of objects but a web of relationships
An ecosystem should be understood as a web of relationships. This necessarily goes beyond conventional social network analysis, which depicts a system as a constellation of things or actors connected together by a system of ties
Summary
In describing his intellectual and methodological approach, the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu suggested that students shift their focus from studying the traditional objects of investigation to studying the spaces in between them [1]. The same holds true for studying objects within a system (e.g., groups in society, species in an ecosystem)—we are urged to examine the transactions, interactions, and other inter-relationship between these objects. So, he proposed shifting our attention to the relationships themselves. Ostrom’s social–ecological systems framework focuses mainly around system rules and entities It includes, in its list of variables, the idea of interaction between system objects, but its notion of interaction is similar to the exchange processes modeled in social network theory. We need a general but explicit theoretical approach to understanding relationship This means going beyond evaluating properties of the individual object and or processes of material exchange. It is the relational that operates behind or within the system that systems-focused analytics like vulnerability and resilience can fail to recognize
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