Becoming Naturecultural: Rethinking sustainability for a more-than-human world

Abstract

The Earth is facing extraordinary ecological crises resulting from human impact on the planet. Meanwhile, a growing body of research studies the relationship of organizations with the natural environment but often overlooks anthropocentrism: the premise of human superiority over nature. Unfortunately, this human exceptionalist premise is the crux of the ecological crisis that cannot be overlooked any longer. To address this discrepancy in the literature, we claim that an ontological shift is necessary. Drawing from feminist new materialisms and Deleuzian relational ontologies, we develop becoming naturecultural, a material–discursive assembling process of more-than-human and more-than-capitalist entanglements. To illustrate the analytical value of becoming naturecultural, we engaged in empirical work at an organic cotton t-shirt supply chain, and conducted a multi-sited fieldwork with affective ethnographic methodologies. Working with the data collected, we narrated a human de-centered case study fostering critical but affirmative inquiries about sustainability from a non-anthropocentric relational ontology. At the end we discuss two implications for organizational sustainability research: thinking with and writing with becoming naturecultural. They facilitate moving beyond critiques of anthropocentrism and articulating affirmative possibilities for organization studies in and for the Anthropocene.