Publications

Banitz, T., T. Hertz, L.-G. Johansson, E. Lindkvist, R. Martínez-Peña, S. Radosavljevic, M. Schlüter, K. Wennberg, P. K. Ylikoski,and V. Grimm. 2022. Visualization of causation in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/ ES-13030-270131

In social-ecological systems (SES), where social and ecological processes are intertwined, phenomena are usually complex and involve multiple interdependent causes. Figuring out causal relationships is thus challenging but needed to better understand and then affect or manage such systems. One important and widely used tool to identify and communicate causal relationships is visualization. Here, we present several common visua...

Preiser, R., Schlüter, M., Biggs, R., García, M.M., Haider, J., Hertz, T. & Klein, L. 2021. Complexity-based social-ecological systems research: philosophical foundations and practical implications. In: Biggs et al. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 27–46.

This chapter is part of The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems which provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disci...

Hertz, T., Mancilla Garcia, M.. 2021. The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions. Frontiers in Sociology. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.724751

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...

Mancilla Garcia, M., Hertz, T. and Schlüter, M., 2020. Towards a Process Epistemology for the Analysis of Social-Ecological System. Environmental Values, 29(2), pp.221-239.

This paper proposes an epistemological approach to analyse social-ecological systems from a process perspective in order to better tackle the co-constitution of the social and the ecological and the dynamism of these systems. It highlights the usefulness of rethinking our conceptual tools taking processes and relations as the main constituents of reality instead of fundamental substances or essences. We introduce the concept o...

Hertz, T., Garcia, M.M. 2020. The event: a process ontological concept to understand emergent phenomena. Philosophy Kitchen, https://doi.org/10.13135/2385-1945/4008

Discussions about emergence have traditionally been structured around the dichotomy between strong (ontological) and weak (epistemological) emergence. Those focusing on emergence as an epistemological problem, understand it as metaphysically innocent, indicating an insufficient (perhaps temporarily so) knowledge of the world. Ontological emergence, on the other hand, admits new levels of reality and causal powers. It emphasize...

Hertz, T., Garcia, M.,M., Schlüter, M. 2020. From nouns to verbs: How process ontologies enhance our understanding of social‐ecological systems understood as complex adaptive systems. People and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10079

Research on social‐ecological systems (SES) has highlighted their complex and adaptive character and pointed to the importance of recognizing their intertwined nature. Yet, we often base our analysis and governance of SES on static and independent objects, such as actors and resources which are not well suited to address complexity and intertwinedness. This bias, which is largely implicit, has its roots in substance ontologies...

Mancilla Garcia, M., Hertz, T., Schlüter, M. 2019. Towards a process epistemology for the analysis of social-ecological systems. Environmental Values. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/096327119X15579936382608

This paper proposes an epistemological approach to analyse social-ecological systems from a process perspective in order to better tackle the co-constitution of the social and the ecological and the dynamism of these systems. It highlights the usefulness of rethinking our conceptual tools taking processes and relations as the main constituents of reality instead of fundamental substances or essences. We introduce the concept o...

Hertz, T., M. Schlüter. 2015. The SES-Framework as boundary object to address theory orientation in social-ecological system research: The SES-TheOr approach. Ecological Economics 116: 12–24

Social–ecological system (SES) research is inherently cross-disciplinary which can create multiple challenges for building knowledge of SES. Some of these challenges relate to differences in ontological commitments due to theory orientation of individual disciplines. Frameworks, understood as boundary objects, have been suggested as tools for dealing with this type of challenge. This paper investigates this capacity of framew...