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The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions

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 caus...

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Autores principales: Hertz, Tilman, Mancilla Garcia, Maria
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8548652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34722730
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.724751
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author Hertz, Tilman
Mancilla Garcia, Maria
author_facet Hertz, Tilman
Mancilla Garcia, Maria
author_sort Hertz, Tilman
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-85486522021-10-28 The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions Hertz, Tilman Mancilla Garcia, Maria Front Sociol Sociology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8548652/ /pubmed/34722730 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.724751 Text en Copyright © 2021 Hertz and Mancilla Garcia. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Hertz, Tilman
Mancilla Garcia, Maria
The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions
title The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions
title_full The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions
title_fullStr The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions
title_full_unstemmed The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions
title_short The Cod and the Cut: Intra-Active Intuitions
title_sort cod and the cut: intra-active intuitions
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8548652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34722730
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.724751
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