Abstract
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.
Highlights
Truth, according to Foucault, depends on “the instruments required to discover it, the categories necessary to think it, and an adequate language for formulating it in propositions” (Foucault et al, 2008)
We will proceed by defining the performative, material-discursive arrangements that realize this cut: 1) The bifurcation of nature (Whitehead, 1919) which realizes an ontological distinction between humans and nature and, building on this distinction, 2) disciplinary frameworks from international relations, economic science and fisheries science that guide the development of management approaches for the Baltic cod
Increasing Productivity for Economic Development and the Collapse of the Cod This is the story of modern fishery management. How did it contribute to the collapse of the Baltic cod? Here, we argue that a territorializing process of economic nature that we can characterize as emanating from a drive for increasing productivity in the name of national development led to the collapse of the Baltic cod
Summary
Truth, according to Foucault, depends on “the instruments required to discover it, the categories necessary to think it, and an adequate language for formulating it in propositions” (Foucault et al, 2008). We will proceed by defining the performative, material-discursive arrangements that realize this cut: 1) The bifurcation of nature (Whitehead, 1919) which realizes an ontological distinction between humans and nature and, building on this distinction, 2) disciplinary frameworks from international relations, economic science and fisheries science that guide the development of management approaches for the Baltic cod. These models and approaches are the apparatuses that produce the phenomena of international fishery management within which entities and their properties become determinate Within this cut the “fish-asfit-for management” [term coined by Holm and Nielsen (2007)] comes to life as the result of “the construction and stabilization of a heterogeneous network, tying the fish in with fishermen, echo integrators, log books, legislation, computers, bureaucracies, mathematical formulas, and surveillance procedures.
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