Response assemblages and their socioecological fit

Abstract

Safeguarding the integrity of critical ecological functions that secure the continuous provision of ecosystem services requires the assessment of the effectiveness of human responses to environmental degradation. Narrowly defined response options, for example, isolated actions targeting the resources impacted or the drivers and proximate causes of environmental degradation, together with attention to ‘best practices’ and ‘proper policies’, may not align with empirical evidence and scientific developments, demonstrating that human responses are contextual and contingent. Embracing a nonreductionist ontology, this article proposes that the ‘response assemblage’ is a suitable analytic to represent ‘responses-in-context’. It redefines the effectiveness of human responses to environmental degradation as the ‘socioecological fit of the response assemblage’. Response assemblages (RAs) are geographically and historically unique, provisional wholes emerging from processes of assembling heterogeneous biophysical and human components of a sociospatial hierarchy into purposeful, place- and time-specific associations that are shaped by and shape human responses. Their socioecological fit (SEFRA) concerns the degree to which the match among all components furthers the maintenance of socioecological resilience. After reviewing the pertinent literature, the RA and its SEFRA are detailed by synthesizing assemblage theory and the ‘problem of fit’ literature within a Complex Adaptive system and Resilience perspective. Their implications for theorizing human responses and their effectiveness, developing integrated methodologies, guiding decision and policy making, as well as for future research, are discussed in conclusion.