Author response

Dialogues in Human Geography

2017, Vol. 7(2) 212220
Why I fell for assemblages: The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/2043820617720096
journals.sagepub.com/home/dhg

Helen Briassoulis
University of the Aegean, Greece

Abstract
This response to the commentaries on my paper (Briassoulis (2017) Response assemblages and their
socioecological fit: conceptualizing human responses to environmental degradation. Dialogues in Human
Geography (this issue)) clarifies conceptual, methodological, policy, planning, and politics issues and sum-
marizes the value of assemblage-based approaches for studying and intervening in sociospatial phenomena.
Assemblage Thinking implies a processual view of socioecological systems and their associated spatial
hierarchy as multiplicities constituted by assemblages that provide an ontological alternative either to
wholes/essences or to the ontological void of many empirical studies. It offers a common framework to
reconceptualize concepts such as degradation, responses, and the effectiveness, or fit, of plans, policies, and
management schemes implemented to address them. It views these as constantly and contingently pro-
duced out of relatively autonomous human and nonhuman components through formal and informal
situated practices. It provides an all-embracing context and apposite integrative constructs for substantive
theory building to address dynamic, socioecological problems. It challenges researchers to approach and
analyze these problems as relational, and therefore through methodological openness, pluralism, and
judicious and masterful synthesis of both multidisciplinary scientific and traditional/lay knowledge,
accomplished through both quantitative and qualitative techniques. It embeds policy and planning analysis
and practice in the uncertain and unpredictable milieu of multiplicities and emphasizes morphogenetic
processes, nonlinear relationships, and emergent, situated policy outcomes. It thus keeps analysts and
managers alert and open to all possibilities, prompts a reconceptualization of policy making and planning as
re/de/territorializing processes, and points to process-based adaptive governance.

Keywords
Assemblage Thinking, environmental degradation, methodology, planning, policy

The warm welcome of my article by the insightful
commentators gave me the opportunity to clarify
several issues that the original paper could not
directly, and/or completely, cover. My encounter
with assemblages occurred while researching
human responses to land degradation (http://led
dra.aegean.gr/index.htm). The inevitable perusal
of the natural, social, and policy sciences
literature revealed a rich variety of disciplinary
conceptualizations, theories, models, and empirical
studies of socioenvironmental phenomena, including
numerous post-1970s interdisciplinary endeavors
Corresponding author:
Helen Briassoulis, Department of Geography, University of the
Aegean, Mytilini, Lesvos, 81100 Greece.
Email: e.briassouli@aegean.gr
Briassoulis
invoking sustainability and resilience. Based on this
knowledge and my multidisciplinary background, a
first observation was that material/nonhuman ele-
ments (e.g. land, water, air, biota, landesque capital,
technical infrastructure, capital) are always explicit
in the study of environmental degradation (ED),
which requires thorough knowledge of not only of
the material environment but also of humanenvi-
ronment relationships. Moreover, nonhuman ele-
ments decisively determine the delineation of
socioecological systems, or SESs. For example,
watersheds have long been used as study areas
because biophysical and socioeconomic functions
are integrated within their territory. So, the nonhu-
man and the material, which post-structuralist socio-
logical circles discovered beginning in the 1980s,
has long been integral to humanenvironment stud-
ies. Moreover, the 1987 WCED Brundtland Report
and the 1992 Rio Summit, among others, assigned
the environment international political legitimacy
and publicity.
A second observation was that, despite the devel-
opment of post-positivist and non-positivist
approaches, the treatment of the nonhuman is still
strongly positivist and dictates essentialist ontolo-
gies (wholes) that privilege the use of hard data and
quantitative techniques in support of evidence-
based decision-making. The application of
Complexity Science has greatly improved human
environment studies, but its full potential has yet to
tap. SESs are treated mainly as wholes, open and/or
closed complex systems, and not as multiplicities of
assemblages, an ontology congruent with Complex-
ity Science (Bonta and Protevi, 2004; DeLanda,
2002) that better approximates the analysis of the
constitution and dynamics of complex sociospatial
phenomena. I have approached, and appreciated,
Assemblage Thinking (AT) from the perspective
of policy and planning in addressing sociospatial
problems. These wicked problems (Rittel and
Weber, 1973) enunciate how human intent and val-
ues drive actions (practices) that modify their
material and immaterial constituents and their rela-
tionships. Their treatment requires not doomed-to-
failure One-Size-Fits-All (OSFA) solutions but
continuous guidance in messy, adversarial, and
ideologically/politically charged implementation
213
milieus, and as such, demand tailored interventions
to confront future uncertainty.
Thus, when I first came across the assem-
blages literature (Anderson et al., 2012; Area,
2011; Bennett, 2005), I realized the suitability
of AT for ontologically framing human
environment, or socioecological, analysis,
decision-making, and planning. The writings of
Manuel DeLanda were instrumental in providing
a clear and digestible description of AT. He
should be commended for interpreting Deleuze
and Guattaris obscure, garbled, and accessible-
only-to-the-initiated texts, as well as their often
idiosyncratic use of common words (land, consis-
tency, etc.). He linked their works to germane
epistemological schools and complex systems
mathematics (Differential Geometry and related
resources) and, thus, facilitated the transfer and
use of their philosophical deliberations in applied
fields like geography, planning, and manage-
ment. DeLanda disengaged the epistemological
and analytical aspects of AT from Deleuze and
Guattaris particular ideological orientation,
thus revealing the original nature and pivotal role
of multiplicities and assemblages in conceptua-
lizing sociospatial and other phenomena and the
weight of values and valuations in such
conceptualizations.
The elaboration and application of AT in
diverse scientific areas confirms McFarlane and
Andersons (2011) proposition that assemblage
is used in three main waysas descriptor, con-
cept, and ethosand that AT is rooted in but
does not strictly adhere to nor need be limited
by Deleuze and Guattaris work. Appropriate
applications can exhibit a minimum agreement
on main concepts, move the original ideas fur-
ther, and make AT an operational and useful
conceptual frame for the analysis of multitudi-
nous sociospatial issues. Adequate education in
mathematics (topology in particular), philosophy
and epistemology, a holistic and comprehensive
outlook, the use of consistently defined inter-
linked concepts, and a recognition of the crucial
significance of first setting the ontology of the
object of reference right in sociospatial analysis
are essential requirements toward this purpose.
214 Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)

Conceptual issues socioeconomic, cultural, administrative, and other

criteria. SES boundaries are fuzzy, delimited by
Two communication issues arose between the com-
actual biophysical and human processes, and vary
mentators and me that make it necessary to clarify
over time.
the definitions and meaning of certain terms appear-
Human actions, driven by biophysical and
ing in Briassoulis (2017). First, there is the tendency
human forces, modify the biophysical, socioeco-
to attach to words socioculturally and politically
nomic, cultural, and other characteristics of a SES.
determined meanings with positive or negative con-
Answering Faras (2017) points, ED is socially
notations, reflecting dominant, hegemonic dis-
constructed, that is, it is said to occur if particular
courses and narratives, political expediencies,
stakeholders judge that certain changes are undesir-
value judgments, disciplinary interpretations, and
able because they disrupt biophysical, socioeco-
idiosyncratic definitions, often wedded to fashion-
nomic, and other functions. The autonomous
able ideologies and personalized uses of words.
existence of the biophysical world (the external
Second, another tendency is to reify and treat con-
Nature), even before humans appeared, neither
cepts as homogeneous and invariable, interpreting
implies nor assumes that Nature is the ultimate
them uniformly, irrespective of the context of their
arbiter of the socioecological fit of the response
use. Examples abound: state, impact, system, net-
assemblages (SEFRA). I make clear that humans
work, planning, policy, ontology, resilience, vulner-
evaluate the worth of ecological functions and
ability, climate change, and so on. Here are a few
ecosystem services relative to their goals, just as
important guideposts that underwrite my paper.
they judge the fit. This is exactly what makes the
The literature uses the term Assemblage Theory,
SEFRA contextual, contingent, composite, and
like Complexity Theory and Actor Network Theory.
distributive.
I have elected to use Assemblage Thinking in order
What are human responses to ED?, Head
to avoid confusion with the substantive and proce-
(2017) and Faras (2017) ask. The common under-
dural interpretations of theory. In Briassoulis
standing is that they concern positive actions that
(2017), I do not develop any theory, as Haller
improve the biophysical and, consequently, the
(2017) assumes. I elaborate on the ontology of
socioeconomic and other characteristics affected.
sociospatial phenomena to support substantive the-
I argued that any action undertaken in the presence
ory building.
of ED is a response option. The underlying intent of
The term system does not denote compact, sta-
the action may not be to combat ED. Even if this is
tic, unchangeable wholes. Its diverse uses generally
the intent, the outcome may be undesirable because
refer to a set of interacting components, determined
the effectiveness of responses is contextual and
by the purpose of analysis, which is separate from its
contingent. Actions serving other goals may unin-
environment. The strength of interactions between
tentionally combat ED, while positive actions can,
the system and its environment distinguishes closed
in fact, aggravate it.
from open systems.
To confute the monolithic, essentialist, reified,
A SES comprises biophysical and human, that is,
and univalent conception of responses to ED and
material and immaterial, elements, which are var-
to address their contextual and contingent nature,
iously interrelated. Extant definitions range from
that is, the responses-in-context, I proposed the
very tight to very loose (Binder et al., 2013; Halli-
Response Assemblage (RA). This conceptualiza-
day and Glaser, 2011). Addressing Faras (2017)
tion, drawing on an ontology of becoming,
question about whether SESs preexist and if they
announces that any response is assembled out of
are real, the answer is no. A focal SES and its
nonhuman and human components, thus underlin-
associated spatial hierarchy (higher and lower
ing the nonlinear and processual nature of responses
level SESs) is conceptually, functionally, and
to ED. This contrasts to the conventional under-
spatio-temporally defined, for analysis and/or
standing and usage of the term response and the
decision-making purposes, using environmental,
implicit linearity assumption, which, as Head
Briassoulis
(2017) notes, justifies OSFA solutions to ED (and
other problems).
The adjective response in RA denotes the
purpose and object of reference of the analysis.
Purpose is always, overtly or covertly, tied to one
or many who. The AT literature underlines the
purpose of the coming together of coexisting and
cofunctioning human and nonhuman components
into, however ephemeral, even instantaneous, and
elusive, assemblages that the multifarious adjec-
tives in usepower, global, geopolitical, adapta-
tion, climate, surveillant, and so onevince.
Purpose should be conceived, however, in a
broader-than-functional/operational sense,
because as Srnicek (2007: 114, n262) notes . . . the
original French word for assemblages
agencementstems from the root for agency
and includes a sense of (assembled) movement and
purpose. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) alluded to
purpose when they wrote:
Assemblages are necessary in order for the unity of
composition enveloped in a stratum, the relations
between a given stratum and the others, and the rela-
tion between these strata and the [virtual] plane of
consistency to be organized rather than random. (cited
in Srnicek 2007: 55).
The deeper enunciation of purpose is their notion
of desire that underlies the emergence (constitution)
of assemblages. For Deleuze and Guattari, it all
starts with desire . . . (it) is the source of all human
creation and production (Purcell, 2013: 23).
Deleuze and Guattari pondered whether social
assemblages are compositions of desire (Bonta and
Protevi, 2004: 77) since [d]esire constantly couples
continuous flows and partial objects that are by
nature fragmentary and fragmented (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1983: 6; cited in Muller, 2015: 29). Desire,
however, is not pregiven: There are no internal
drives in desire, only assemblages. Desire is always
assembled; it is what the assemblage determines it
to be (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 229). Purpose,
like desire and responses, is also assembled, situ-
ated, emergent, and, like agency and identity, com-
posite and distributive (Anderson et al., 2012,
Bennett, 2005).
215
Faras (2017) and Head (2017) call for a clarifi-
cation of the relationship between SES and RA,
which is a nontrivial matter. For want of a better
term, I suggest that socio-ecological milieu may
be used instead of SES because in Briassoulis
(2017), I consider a focal SES and its spatial hier-
archy as constituting a dynamic, immanent (no out-
side and inside), multidimensional space
figuratively represented by a multidimensional
basin (domain) of attraction possessing more than
one attractor. A point in this basin, described by the
bundle of values of selected variables in a period,
is a state of the SES and represents an emergent RA
associated with a local attractor which signals how
the components of the focal and other SESs are
contingently assembled to respond to ED. RAs are
neither pregiven nor predetermined, nor are they
intentionally shaped, as Faras (2017) ponders.
Because the elements of the multidimensional
space are variously assembled in response and other
assemblages (reflecting other purposes), a SES and
its sociospatial hierarchy is conceived as a multi-
plicity that is being continuously constituted by
assemblages unfolding over time, overlapping, and
intermingling (because they share the components
of various SESs) (Briassoulis, 2017). This hopefully
clarifies Faras concern that I am essentially talking
about a plurality and not a multiplicity as well as
Heads question: SESs (or, better, socioecological
milieus as I suggested above) are neither wholes nor
networks but multiplicities contextually and contin-
gently actualized by various assemblages. More-
over, as Horowitz (2017: XX) observes, RAs are
multiples themselves; for a given focal level, and
under the flat ontology assumption of AT, RAs are
composed of lower level assemblages. Competition
among RAs (Horowitz, 2017: XX) does arise when
RAs serve competing purposes because they share
common components that may be unable to simul-
taneously satisfy competing goals. Usually, the
emergent RAs are the material expression of the
purpose associated with a dominant ideology.
It is very difficult to give satisfactory brief exam-
ples of RAs; the example in Briassoulis (2017),
which is not imaginary as Faras assumes, is a typ-
ical, indicative case. It is impossible to summarize
the thick description and the dynamics of SESs,
216
their spatial hierarchy (the socioecological milieu),
and the RAs that are constantly emerging over time.
The growing literature that applies AT to study
degradation and other issues contains detailed
examples. Haller (2017) rightly observes that cul-
tural landscapes are characteristic examples of RAs.
Finally, the reconceptualization of fit as the
SEFRA (Briassoulis, 2017) addresses Faras call
of giving up the conceptual repertoires, such as that
of ecological fit, that invoke an external Nature
(2017, XX). More importantly, SEFRA disposes
with the assumptions underlying Young et al.s
(2008) conception of fit that conceptualizes SESs
as wholes, treats the natural and the human system
separately, and focuses on how best to design right
institutions that fit to the natural system to resolve
socioecological problems. The terms ecological fit
and social fit reflect this conception, which Brom-
ley (2012) has heavily criticized by pointing to the
inherent uncertainty surrounding both the natural
and the human system and the limitations of science
to properly predict their dynamics in designing the
right institutional responses. RAs offer a way out
of this impasse by submitting to a processual view of
responses to ED as dynamically assembled and
actualized in emergent RAs. Lejano (2017: XX)
rightly underlines the fit of which Briassoulis
writes is none other than the process of assembly.
To answer Faras (2017) query, fit is compatible
with AT because fit is integral to the concept of
assemblage. Asking is activity X fit to its context
or is the RA fit to its context, as Haller (2017)
does, is not meaningful because RA and context are
inseparable. SEFRA offers provisional assessments
of the effectiveness of human actions to combat ED,
while thick description reveals the processes of
assemblyfor example, bricolage (Lejano and
Shankar, 2013) and institution shopping (Haller,
2017)that explain how the observed fit comes
about.
SEFRA upends the conventional usage of fit as
having positive connotation; fit may be fully accep-
table (very good), completely unacceptable (very
poor), or anything in-between the two. The provi-
sional and revisable assessment of SEFRA is based
on user-defined criteria, cutoff values, and ranking
(Briassoulis, 2015). It has no meaning outside the
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
particular application context and reflects the
current state of scientific and lay knowledge, socio-
cultural norms, and value systems of those who
determine/use them (fit for whom and for what?).
Addressing Heads (2017: XX) query, can other
conceptualizationsenvironmental degradation,
socio-ecological systemsremain intact within an
assemblage approach?, I recap what should be clear
by now: an assemblage-based approach necessitates
a reconceptualization of SESs, ED, responses to ED,
SER, and fit, among many others.
Methodological issues
As the commentators note, assemblage-based anal-
yses of the dynamics of SESs and RAs raise impor-
tant methodological issues. Conceptualizing
responses as RAs poses the important challenge of
how to describe and analyze the relational and
active processes of relating and fitting (Lejano,
2017). Quantitative data analysis techniques are
inadequate because they assess contingent relation-
ships among the outcomes of generating processes
(Sayer, 1984). Lejano (2017), Head (2017), and oth-
ers suggest that only thick description and multi-
method approaches can satisfactorily analyze
complex multilevel processes of assembly. Two
broad approaches can be discerned: the use of cel-
lular automata and agent-based modeling (Clarke,
2014) and qualitative methods, such as narratives
(e.g. Lejanos narrative network), reasoned history,
informed (scientific) reasoning, and expert knowl-
edge (DeLanda, 1997; Epstein and Vogt, 2011;
Patchell and Hayter, 2013). Whether policy mak-
ers/politicians, who usually demand tangible and
operational results/proposals, will endorse soft, qua-
litative approaches is an open question.
The limitations of available data, conventional
representation resources (charts, graphs, maps), and
language to tell the full story of dynamic and elusive
RAsnot to mention the various mechanisms
through which heterogeneous components are
related (e.g. habits, values, formal rules, cus-
toms)should be acknowledged. RA specification
error, that is, absence (by omission or commission)
of RA components due to incomplete data, is also
possible. The New Caledonia example (Horowitz,
Briassoulis
2017) seems to be such a case. Various kinds of data
(visual, aural, olfactory, gustatory, tactile) should be
employed, as knowledge of the world is acquired
through all the senses. However, valuable experien-
tial and personal information can be neither easily
accessed nor expressed. Native researchers possess
access to insider knowledge and information that are
invaluable for analyzing emergent RAs.
Assemblage-based analysis concerns the diverse
assemblages comprising a focal multiplicity (socio-
ecological milieu). This implies that the properties,
socioecological resilience, and fit assessed (e.g.
Briassoulis, 2015) are not system wide but assem-
blage-related. Moreover, analysis should consider
other assemblages, besides RAs, forming from the
same components, coevolving with the RAs and
influencing their properties and socioecological fit.
Policy, governance, and politics
An AT outlook entails changes in the way issues of
policy, governance, and politics are conceptualized,
framed, and handled, as several commentaries
revealed. In particular:
1. Response(s) to what? From an AT perspec-
tive, ED and responses to ED are not sepa-
rate. Actual RAs reflect the state of the SES
components as assembled via the complex
webs of practices people employ to achieve
their goals in a period. Heads (2017: XX)
query is pertinent here:
. . . our actions in relation to climate change adaptation
will be very different according to whether we under-
stand ourselves as responding to climate itself, or to a
complex assemblage comprising more-than-climate;
the stimuli of science, policy-makers, media and fear,
rather than (or at least in addition to) climate itself.
(Head, 2010).
How, then, do policy makers know a priori if
proposed policy measures to combat ED are, for
example, adaptation measures, and the resulting
RA is an adaptation assemblage? More generally,
however, explicitly one states environmental man-
agement goals, they are always being assembled in
217
the course of making and implementing decisions.
Analysts should be wary that it is often unclear to
what, why, and how people collectively respond;
more often than not, they respond to more than one
issue and pursue several goals.
1. How to assess the effectiveness of response
options? Policy makers commonly inquire
about the effectiveness of response options,
for example, taxation, land use regulations,
environmental education, and so on. This
has proven to be a mission impossible
because, an AT approach explains,
responses are continuously assembled and
they are situated; hence, the difficulties of
neatly separating and describing the formal
and informal responses on the ground, dis-
entangling the foldings and un-/re-foldings
of multilevel heterogeneous components,
collecting data, and performing impact anal-
ysis. SEFRA, the proposed situated assess-
ment of the composite and distributed fit (i.e.
effectiveness) of responses-in-context,
incorporates the effects of response options
of interest to policy makers.
2. How to find effective points of intervention?
Suggesting effective points of intervention
to alleviate ED or other problems is an
important planning and management ques-
tion, as Head (2017) probes and Briassoulis
(2017) discusses. Harvey (2010), invoking
the notion of assemblage, concluded that
there is no perfect point of intervention.
A realistic strategy is to explore the complex
interactions and anticipate the implications
of intervening in one sphere but with recog-
nition of the effects on all other relevant
spheres of human activity.
Conceiving of SESs (or, better, socioecological
milieus) as multiplicities supports policy analysis/
practice along the lines of Ostroms (1990) concep-
tion of policies as experiments. Thus, when analyz-
ing assemblages at a certain focal level, provisional
suggestions (add/remove components, modify prac-
tices) may foster the emergence of desirable RAs.
The immediate question desirable to whom?,
218
combined with Heads (2017: XX) concern How
are we to act if the total context may be essentially
ungovernable?, points to . . . politics.
Assemblage-based analysis reveals the politics
of responses to ED, as Faras (2017) suggests. The
composition (included/excluded components from
various spatial levels), distribution of roles, influ-
ences of contingencies, and the broader historic con-
text of RAs evince the power structure of a problem
situation. The formal and informal practices and
mechanisms linking components address the ques-
tion of who/what relates to who/what, how and
why and explain the observed human responses and
the nonoccurrence of other feasible responses, as
well as the options actors have (Haller, 2017). For
example, the nonadoption of certain beneficial land
management measures by farmers may owe to polit-
ical or institutional barriers and not to lack of edu-
cation, interest, and so on. The incidence of no
response to ED (business-as-usual) can be eluci-
dated by recourse to mechanisms that keep a SES
locked-in a degraded basin of attraction and pre-
vent transition to nondegraded basins. Thus, to
answer Heads (2017) query, the governability of
SESs, conceptualized as multiplicities of assem-
blages, depends on power balances among their
components.
Horowitz (2017), invoking the Deleuzian dis-
tinction between arborescent and rhizomatic assem-
blages, argues that the latter do not have power.
Both kinds of assemblages coexist, intricately and
idiosyncratically folded together and sharing com-
ponents as the cases of state corruption or the use of
formal means (e.g. funding) to promote irrelevant
goals evince. Several rhizomatic (informal) assem-
blages, such as those associated with illegal activi-
ties, may have significant power. However, it is not
straightforward to explain or predict the exact out-
comes of power struggles because power in assem-
blages is composite and distributed. SEFRA can
partly provide assistance to this task.
The politics of knowledge and expertise, which
Faras (2017) broaches, has ramifications with
important bearing on assemblage-based analysis
and management decisions. Collective knowledge,
either scientific or traditional/lay, is continuously
produced and constantly acquired by individuals
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
through all their senses. Faras questions the
existence of objective environmental degradation
processes (XX) and suggests that knowledge
would be understood here in representational terms
and thus subject to human error, miscalculations,
etc. (XX). The existence of a mind-independent
reality, as AT axiomatically assumes, neither denies
the social construction and situatedness of knowl-
edge, and its co-constitution in assemblages, nor
bows to a reified Nature out there. The ideas of
ontological politics and cosmopolitics Faras
(2017) draws upon highlight the fact that actual RAs
(or other assemblages) reflect the state of always
imperfect individual and collective knowledge.
Authentic or politically directed changes in knowl-
edge modify the composition of RAs and vice versa.
The system ontology becomes unsuitable for
assessing the effectiveness of human activities com-
pared to the assemblage ontology that enunciates
the uncertain, volatile, and knowledge-dependent
nature of degradation phenomena. The politics of
knowledge question sensitizes both analysts and
users of analyses to the open and revisable nature
of RAs owing to the political forces that shape
knowledge of the world.
I fell for assemblages because . . .
1. They offer an ontological alternative to
wholes/essences or to the ontological void
of empirical studies.
2. ATs processual view of SESs and their spa-
tial hierarchy (i.e. of socioecological mili-
eus) as multiplicities advances a vibrant
object of reference urging researchers to
renegotiate taken-for-granted conceptual,
theoretical, methodological, and policy/
planning issues.
3. Reconceptualizing degradation and the
effectiveness (or fit) of responses (e.g. plans,
policies, management schemes) as being
assembled out of relatively autonomous
human and nonhuman components captures
the continuous becoming of the complex
real world, renders typologies pointless,
offers a convincing alternative to stage
Briassoulis
models of sociospatial development, and
creates an alternative lexicon needed for
assemblage-based substantive theory
building.
4. AT provides an all-embracing, common
conceptual framework and apposite,
dynamic, integrative constructs for substan-
tive socioecological theory building through
the synthesis of multidisciplinary scientific
and of traditional/lay knowledge. The
emphasis on formal (institutionalized) and
informal situated practices and the particular
mechanisms at work explain the emergence
and evolution of intermingling formal
(arborescent) and informal (rhizomatic)
assemblages, thus, blurring the formal
informal distinction.
5. Assemblage-based analysis, concerning
individual assemblages and not the SES as
a whole, challenges researchers to employ
methodological openness and pluralism and,
more importantly, judicious and masterful
synthesis of quantitative and qualitative
techniques.
6. Assemblage-based approaches embed pol-
icy making and planning in the uncertain and
unpredictable milieu of multiplicities,
emphasizing the emergent, and situated out-
comes of planned interventions. They, con-
sequently, prompt a reconceptualization of
planning and policy making as re/de/territor-
ializing processes and a reorientation toward
process-based adaptive planning and man-
agement or, better, governance to accommo-
date the coexistence and coevolution of
formal and informal interventions.
Assemblage-based, adaptive governance
aims at preventing RAs from been locked-
in degraded basins of attraction or, if they
are, facilitates their transition to nonde-
graded basins.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.
219
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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