Rowing social-ecological systems: morals, culture and resilience

Jacob von Heland

Rowing social-ecological systems: morals, culture and resilience

Jacob von Heland

©Jacob von Heland, Stockholm 2011 ISBN 978-91-7447-359-9 Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice AB, Stockholm 2011 Distributor: Dept. of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University Art cover: Victor Näär

To Fanny

Abstract

The ongoing shift from management and governance of ecosystems to relational complex adaptive social-ecological systems (SES) empha-sizes a dynamic and integrated humans-in-nature perspective where management traditions need to handle surprise and uncertainty. But such a shift also needs to investigate how diversity and differences in human intentions as well as cultures and morals might exist and relate to the existence of such systems. The papers of the thesis explicitly bring in the cultural dimension and morality into resilience thinking. Paper I analyzes cultural and ecological aspects of trees and tree planting in Androy, Madagascar. Trees and tree planting contribute to two roles in the SES: 1) trees are planted as or become sign posts or manifestations of remembrance of significant events involving death, and 2) trees are planted as a symbol of sealing agreements or order in society. Culturally, planting trees serves as a symbol of renewal, puri-fication, agreement and boundary-making. Ecologically, planting trees contributes to the generation of ecosystem services in an otherwise denuded landscape with drifting sand dunes. Paper II tests the role of forest patches for generating pollination services to local beans that constitute an important protein staple in Androy, one of the poorest regions in Madagascar. The results indicate a significant effect of in-sect pollination on bean yields and a strong spatial pattern of locating bean plots closer to forests than expected by chance. Surveys among farmers revealed a high reliance on beans for annual household in-come and for the rural food security. Paper III addresses the adaptive capacity of the indigenous forest management in Androy with regard to religious and climatic drivers of change. Analysis identified adap-tive capacity of these forest institutions to do with (1) a short feedback loop between people and ecosystems, (2) a place-based cultural iden-tity that was shared across religious and clan geographical divides, and (3) mechanisms for conflict resolution and reorganisation follow-ing violation or fault. We found an expanding cleft in the society be-tween ancestral cultists and Christians, a challenge for the future rele-vance and use of the taboo institution in Androy. Paper IV is con-

cerned with cultural analysis of the robustness of provisioning ecosys-tem services in Androy. The analysis, based on field work and inter-views, concerned the interdependence of morality, cultural practices and the generated ecosystem services (e.g. via sacred forests, crop pol-lination, subsistence farming, cattle economy and societal transition rituals). We present a social-ancestral contract as a social attractor with a shared moral order keeping the social-ecological dynamics in a relatively stable state. We describe how practices and rituals uphold the contract between living and nonliving clan members, as well being instrumental for explaining the robustness of the ecosystem service regime that provides people with subsistence. Paper V This paper explores how social-ecological memory (SEM) can be seen both as a source of inertia and path dependence and a source of adaptive capac-ity for renewal and reorganization in the emerging theory about social-ecological systems. Drawing on agropastoralists of the Norse Green-landers and of southern Madagascar, we find that a broader diversity of social-ecological memory was present in both social-ecological systems, but not mobilized. Instead, social-ecological memories are part of what explains community coherence and the barriers to adop-tion of a more diverse set of practices. We suggest that recombinations of SEM for novelty can help avoid rigidity traps and pave the way for social-ecological transformations. Paper VI discusses historical and current authority claims in local and planetary science-policy in the context of planetary boundaries, resilience and the diversity of knowl-edge traditions. Expanding resilience thinking to the planetary scale needs to address moral and epistemological aspects of knowledge and politics that cohere with current understandings of the world as living and complex. Ethical obligations need to be attached to the role held by researchers as cross-scale knowledge brokers in emerging forms of global environmental politics. The thesis has studied some of many interdependences between the social and the ecological and shown that cultural and morals dimensions of analysis bring important insights and challenges to resilience thinking and efforts to row social-ecological systems towards sustainability. Key words: resilience, culture, morality, complex social-ecological systems, memory, ecosystem services, southern Madagascar, plane-tary boundaries

Preface for this thesis

The articles in this doctoral thesis explore a number of fields, disci-plines and theories (the dry spiny forest ecology and conservation, African and Austronesian history and anthropology, global change and resilience, environmental justice and existentialism, film studies and Avatar, landscape ecology, Medieval Norsemen settlement on Greenland). This Kappa will not attempt to do full justice to all of these. But it will relate them to a fieldwork research tradition at the Department of Systems Ecology of studying different forms of natural resource management to create new knowledges, inform existing management and theory, as well as to build new traditions, and reflect on and develop existing theory and concepts. In this regard work has been conducted in affiliation with the resil-ience research network and Stockholm Resilience Centre, an interdis-ciplinary and international group concerned with knowledge produc-tion in sustainable resource management and governance from local to global perspectives. The two main sites where knowledge and management were studied, produced and related were thus Androy, Madagascar and Stockholm University, Sweden. From one side the Tandroy management tradition and its context in southern Madagascar; from the other systems ecol-ogy, complexity theory, cultural and ethnographic studies. These were combined and made travel to address knowledge and management in Androy and Planetary Boundaries.

Acknowledgement

To begin, I would like to give a profound Thank You to my two su-pervisors: Carl Folke for showing your support and faith in me and my work throughout this period, for your generosity and care, for exciting research and ideas; Sverker Sörlin for accepting me and taking the time and effort to conduct this undefined role so well out of interest and concern, for teaching me, for collaborating. Many thanks to Tho-mas Elmqvist for passionate leadership and for adventures in the fields of Madagascar, to which you introduced me, as well as European capitals. Thanks also my other co-authors for all the good work Maria Tengö, Björn Nykvist and Andriamaparany Rivolala and to my other dear and inspiring collaborators Emily Boyd (soon MAB), Henrik Ernstson (soon surf’s up in Cape Town), Stephan Barthel (soon Stockholm), Carole Crumley (soon France), Vikrom Mathur (soon Sri Lanka). Thanks all you kind, multi-skilled and clever friends at Kräf-tan, and colleagues at Stockholm Resilience Centre and Dept. of Sys-tems Ecology (Barbara, Lasse, Siw), thanks partners and collaborators in the Dry Spiny Forest Project, Madagascar–Nicola, Morabe, Harena, Fingana, Fandrosogna, Nado, Nivo, Herilala, Victor, Markku, Sandra, the Museum of Art and Archaeology (Chantal Radimilahy). Thanks to the MAB crew Per, Lisen, Cecilia. Thanks Fredrik, Albert and Louise at Albaeco, Jerker and Robert at Azote, Christina Schaffer. Sandra Thunander for many of the photos in the dissertation. And many thanks Victor Näär for the beautiful art cover. There are my close friends. And my family! Then there is Fanny. I would not have done this without any of you. Formas, The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning provided financial support for my re-search. I have also received travel grants from Liljevalch J:ors resesti-pendium, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and Riddarhusets stipendiefond.

List of papers

This thesis is based on the following papers, referred to by their Ro-man numerals. Papers I, III and VI are reproduced with permission of the copyright holders. I Tengö M. and von Heland J. 2011. Trees and tree-planting in

southern Madagascar: sacredness and remembrance. In Tidball K. and Krasny M. (eds.) Greening in the Red Zone -Disaster, Resilience and Community Greening. NY: Springer.

II Andriamaparany R., von Heland J. and Elmqvist T. The role of sacred forests in pollination of crops and local livelihoods in southern Madagascar. In review, Ecological Economics.

III Tengö M. and von Heland J. 2011. Adaptive capacity of local indigenous institutions: the case of the taboo forests of southern Madagascar. In Boyd E. and Folke C. (eds.) Adapting Institu-tions – Governance, Complexity and Social-Ecological Resil-ience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

IV von Heland J. and Folke C. A social contract with the ancestors – culture and intergenerational robustness of a vulnerable eco-system service regime in southern Madagascar. Manuscript.

V von Heland J. and Nykvist B. Social-ecological memory as a source of general and specified resilience. In review, Ecology & Society.

VI von Heland J. and Sörlin S. Works of doubt and leaps of faith: an Augustinian challenge to Planetary Boundaries. In press, Journal of Studies in Nature, Culture and Religion.

In Paper I, I did fieldwork and participated in analysis and writing. In Paper II, I contributed to the idea, parts of the research design, field-work and analysis. Paper III and V got more or less equal input from authors from start to end. I conceived the original idea and led the working process and stood for most of the work and writing on Paper IV and VI.

Contents

Introduction........................................................................................17 Theory................................................................................................22 Research Design.................................................................................34 Results-Summary of papers................................................................40 Discussion...........................................................................................48 Conclusion...........................................................................................57 Sammanfattning på svenska................................................................60 References...........................................................................................63

Abbreviations

SES Social-ecological system CAS Complex adaptive system TEK Traditional ecological knowledge PB Planetary Boundaries

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Introduction

“We, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to know and cor-rectly apply its laws” (Friedrich Engels 1876) “History tells us that ecosystems have a way of coming back to re-mind us of our past” (Louis Lebel 2006).

Nature’s end and resilience thinking

Nuclear physics (Oppenheimer and Volkoff 1939), pesticides (Carson 1962), population growth (Erlich 1968), sustainability science (Clark and Munn 1987), ecosystem degradation (MA 2005), climate change (IPCC 2008) all bear evidence that the turbulent, innovative and de-veloping last five hundred years of human history, e.g. modernity, have not only provided progress and solutions, but also new problems (Turnbull 2000). A major problem concerns modern management of the living and physical environment, “Nature”, that has been assumed to be both a stable constant and a main resource to be put to use in bringing deve-lopment and progress to individuals and society (Berman 1981; Merchant 1992; Norgaard 1994). This reasoning has led to invisible exploitation of nature to produce social and economic capital (Hornborg 2003; Daily 1997) in a manner that has not sufficiently taken into account the externalities, e.g. the prior value of the natural resources (Arrow et al. 1996; Costanza et al. 1997), and that has been called “pathological” because of systematic command-and-control management that failed to sustain the natural resources in the long-term (Holling and Meffe 1996). Philosophers in the continental tradi-

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tion have pointed out that scientific and technological advances have created a capacity to alter increasingly larger things in ways that are not well-understood, a dangerous combination since what is thought of as progress may turn out to be the opposite (Arendt 1993; Cilliers 1998, 1). Steffen and colleagues (Steffen 2005; Steffen et. 2007; Robin & Steffen 2007) describe how human societies dominate plane-tary dynamics with activities that have diminished biodiversity and degraded the ability of the evolved livings systems to provide the life-support that contemporary societies depend on, and how these aspects have until recently been largely overlook in the attempts to write world history. As today’s people seek to better their living conditions nature has be-come so affected that some authors have talked of an approaching ‘end of nature’ (McKibben 1990), or of a conceptual transformation as nature is being transformed into environment at such scale that we are approaching ‘nature’s end’ (Sörlin&Warde 2009). Future resource management and governance will require theories that are capable of at the same time understanding human societies and nature, and not treat them as distinct spheres (Murdoch 1997), either bringing nature into society (Latour 2004), or society into nature (Descola and Pálsson 1996; Murdoch 1997; Scoones 1999; Norgaard 2010), or both. The sustainability discourse (Brundtland 1987) is an articulation of this need. That we have a problem of un-sustainability implies a do-main that humans sustain and that need to be crafted differently (Sörlin and Warde 2009, chap. 1). Locating this realm can be done by paying attention to the “environing” aspects of human actions and the ways in which they have and continue to turn natures into environ-ments:

“Environing is what people do when they transform nature into environment. Tilling, sowing, cleansing, burning, heating, smelting, logging, herding is environing...it is what we do while we’re busy doing other things. Human agency is cer-tainly there, but the agency is rarely directed towards creating environment as a particular outcome of the activity... one could say that the entire Earth is now environment” (Sörlin 2011).

Resilience thinking is based on complexity theory and seeks to inform current management traditions (Chapin et al. 2009; Holling 1986;

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Folke et al. 2002; Walker and Salt 2006). There are particularly two areas of resilience research that this thesis draws from and explores further. The first is the shift from nature to consider the human man-agement and governance of complex social-ecological systems (SES). The second is the question of how to manage well when the world changes in nonlinear ways, a matter of adaptation and transformation. These two issues combined are addressed in thinking with resilience, the “capacity” of SES to deal with change and disturbance and con-tinue to develop (Berkes and Folke 1998; Armitage et al. 2009). This dissertation concerns practice, knowledge and theory to do with natural resource management in Androy in southern Madagascar (pa-pers I-IV). Livestock herding and rain-fed farming (agropastoralism) constitute the main subsistence to four out of five peoples in the re-gion. Fishing is a marginal but alternative practice for coastal dwell-ers. The study is conducted by combining landscape ecological and ethnographic fieldwork with complexity theory and resilience think-ing. The research addresses how a quite varying set of groups or commu-nities under study (the Tandroy, the Vezo, global change researchers, the Medieval Norse, the Thule inuit, the Na’vi the humans and scien-tists in the screenplay Avatar) imagine well-being and how they seek to realize that well-being as part of dynamic social-ecological rela-tions (papers IV-VI). It also seeks to articulate how the concept social-ecological resilience can take into account that different management traditions have different conceptions of well-being and thus seek to manage resilience into different social-ecological relations [different management traditions will of course have other terminology and ways for understanding and shaping the “social-ecological” and its interactions]. Finally, because complex and global connections shape and are shaped by local sites this research has investigated challenges and opportunities for bringing together knowledge from different en-vironings of social-ecological systems. These have been expected to be found in diverse management traditions. The thesis has investigated the following questions of stability, adap-tation and transformation in environmental management with social-ecological systems and resilience thinking:

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• How do cultural notions of moral and well-being relate to so-cial-ecological systems and resilience?

• How do moral and well-being relate to robustness in vulner-able management regimes (so-called traps)?

• How do diversifications or transformations of management re-gimes occur, and what hinders them?

• How can researchers contribute to combining and relating knowledge from different management traditions?

• How can interpretative methods and perspectives contribute to resilience and complexity theory and research?

I begin with a theoretical overview of SES complexity theory and why, in this regard, it is suggested as important to consider resilience. Based on complexity theory we will contrast between two ways of employing SES. In the first, called Standard SES, social and ecologi-cal systems are recognized as linked and research is about a social impact (institution, leadership, practices) on ecological systems (fish-ing, farming, conservation), or vice versa. Analytic categories are de-fined a priori and the system to be managed is the ecosystem, that shapes social systems with feedbacks. In Deep SES there is no social without an ecological, there is only social-ecological systems, truly entwined and coupled. In Deep SES, humans are part of the system and there is consequent need to also recognize and analyze how hu-mans with their multiple intentions and capabilities shape the system dynamics. In the next section of the thesis the scope, methods and the study area will be introduced in more detail. This will be followed by a results section with main insights from the six papers (I-VI) included in the dissertation. Lastly I will discuss the findings with regard to a diver-sity of management traditions, how they shape social-ecological rela-tions, how groups meet and adapt, and how knowledge and interests may travel to other places where human well-being is addressed.

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Theory

This section will describe the shift from managing natural resources to social-ecological systems (SES). I begin by introducing complex sys-tems and resilience, followed by an argument for symbolic and inter-pretivist research in the ethnographic tradition (Goffman 1959; Geertz 1973; Haraway 1988; Lincoln 1995; Smith 2006; Atkinson et al. 2007). Complex adaptive systems Systems theory has been used in biology, computer science and soci-ology to explain an idea that different parts form webs of relations that somehow relate to each other in time and space and can be subsumed under a common pattern, a system (Miller 1995; Lovelock 1990; Bateson 1978; Lilienfeld 1978; Laszlo 1996; May 1972; Odum 1994; Parsons 1951; Rappaport 1971; Bertalanffy 1976; Wiener 1948). This has often been done in horizontal or hierarchal sub-systems: ecosy-stems (savannah, ocean, lake, watershed), topography (continent, shelf, ocean); geography (local, regional, national); political organiza-tion (municipality, federation, state, international) (cf. Berkes and Folke 1998; Norberg and Cumming 2008). These boundaries can then be used to further name, map, categorize and decide about what is inside. However, the validity of such a boundary requires that the system remains the same. If things change, but the boundaries are considered to be the same the knowledge will not be accurate, nor will decisions based on that understanding (e.g. blueprint or panacea solutions) (Geertz 1957; Chapin et al. 2009). Experiments with ecological as well as social and physical systems suggest that they do indeed change, all the time, and the boundaries of the systems with them in different speeds and directions, their behav-

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ior is like complex adaptive systems, CAS (Kauffman 1993; Holland 1996; Levin 2005; Norberg and Cumming 2008). CAS is suggested to be a value-neutral set of ideas that can be used to understand macro-scopic properties in the vast complexity of the world (Norberg and Cumming 2008, 279). The basic idea of CAS is that they are dynamic, even when considered ‘stable’ (Norberg and Cumming 2008). Stabil-ity is inextricably localized and emerges within feedback patterns. Therefore behavior and properties of a complex system are emergent. This means that the system as a whole has different characteristics than the sum of its respective parts and no singular cause-effect analy-sis does the trick in describing patterns or system functions. The inter-actions between system parts and what constitutes the system are co-constitutive and continuously changing which has been articulated as systems change by self-organization. What is more, complex adaptive systems do not only change over time, like evolving species, they also change how they change (Bodin and Wiman 2004). Therefore com-plex adaptive systems are inherently uncertain and impossible to pre-dict. To people complex adaptive systems change in uncertain and surprising ways (Levin 1999). Take New York City as an example of a CAS that is messy and im-possible to overlook yet still displays forms of stability and predict-ability (Holland 1996; Lansing 2003). How come there is milk every day in the store, the bus arrives on schedule, the cafés are open and you can read the daily paper? All these things are interdependent of one another since without customers the café would have to close, and without newspaper that customer would not want a coffee with milk and so on. There is no centrally positioned agent who decides for eve-ryone else what should happen, nor can any individual or group un-derstand the chains of events and processes that amount and shape the complexity of the situation (this of course also goes for those who subscribe to complexity theory). The organization of the city emerges as a result of the interaction between the many parts of the system and its environment. The same pattern of self-organization and emergence can be observed in forests, agricultural landscapes, interactive online games, where current dynamics are the result of co-evolved and highly interdependent groups who in themselves are internally hetero-geneous and diverse (Kauffman 1996; Lansing 1991; Scheffer 2004; Boellstorff 2008). In all these examples surprise and uncertainty are inherent to the lives of people living in them, and managing them (Levin 1999).

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To manage with complex social-ecological systems CAS has been suggested a robust and value-neutral basis for ecosys-tem and social-ecological management. Biologist Simon Levin has suggested that “by viewing Earth as a complex adaptive system, we are not just giving it a fancy new name. Identifying with other systems that have the same organizing principles enables us to import knowl-edge that has been learned from research into those systems” (Levin 1999, 13). The capacity of a complex system to be subject to disturbance without moving into another regime has been referred to as resilience. If on the other hand, the feedback relations in a system are altered or cut by a disturbance, the system can change its structures and qualities. Fun-damental shifts of CAS to another state have been called transforma-tions (Walker et al. 2004). Natural resource management and govern-ance tradition have sought to understand how to navigate, build, nur-ture or enable resilience in complex systems, be they ecological or more recently social-ecological (Colding et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2003; Olsson 2003; Schultz 2009; Ernstson 2011). However, to shift from using examples from the world to develop CAS theory, to using CAS theory to manage the world is not a matter of reversing the direction of study from the theoretical system to the ecological system. Addressing resilience in social-ecological systems came with a turn in the recognition that social-ecological systems are interrelated, the researcher and the manager need to identify sources of change and manage the CAS from within the system1, which makes things quite different (Norberg and Cumming 2008). 1 This shift resonates with anthropology in 70’s and 80’s when anthropologists addressed the previously only partially recognized fact that they also were ‘in’ the worlds of the natives that they were writing ‘about’ (Fuller 2003, 215; Marcus and Fischer 1986). The researchers shaped the course of actions, they were increasingly of native origin, or became native during the course of fieldwork (Jacobs-Huey 2002). One outcome was critiques against totalizing forms of knowledge, scientific, interpretivist or other and seeking for new methods and writ-ing techniques that could address the recognition that one is not exploring new worlds, but stepping into existing and ongoing lives, knowledges and practices (Marcus and Fischer 1986, xi).

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Figure 1. Illustrating the “in”-turn with the resilience marble-in-cup metaphor. Example (1) “Standard SES”, thinking about the ecosystem and its states, (ii) “Deep SES”, thinking about the SES and its states, with yourself inside the system. The question is where is the system? (1) in Standard SES the ball is the system, (2) in Deep SES the engulf-ing ring is the system. Standard and Deep SES When ecosystem management and natural resource management scholars began to apply CAS theory to understand and manage eco-systems, it has become apparent that it is difficult to think and treat Nature and Society as divided because of mutual processes and feed-backs of interdependence. In this regard the study subject has with increased engagement with the complex adaptive systems theory shifted from managing “ecosystems” to “social-ecological systems” (Berkes and Folke 1998, Gunderson and Holling 2002). Today the SES has become the standard framing and domain of interest in resil-ience thinking and the ultimate boundary is the biosphere (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Gunderson et al. 2008; Walker et al. 2002; Liu et al. 2007; Chapin et al. 2010). However, defining smaller SESs according to CAS design principles is not easy. Accordingly SESs are open systems with contexts that may gradually change, disturb or alter the system. As long as the in-ternal feedbacks are relatively intact so is the system. If the feedbacks

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are altered, the system may transform to a different state. But to my knowledge no actual study exists where researchers and managers have a mandate and successful evidence for managing a social-ecological system according to CAS or resilience principles. Rather research has addressed aspects of what might be important to the resil-ience of a hypothesized SES. In this regard studies have focused on external drivers of change and disturbances (e.g. Paper III). The later insight however is problematic since it draws us back to the task of defining, agreeing or devising the boundaries, or the key regu-lating functions of specific social-ecological systems. Social-ecological systems is a theory in development, few people would agree we have discernible social-ecological systems in the world, even if many would agree that it can be a metaphor and a way of thinking about the world, say in the Anthropocene (Steffen et al 2007). Hence, instead of jumping to assuming that it is possible to devise and manage for SES resilience in the world, we will explore this issue in Deep SESs. Deep SES and the rabbit-duck dilemma In the Deep SES humans and the ecological worlds are entangled and co-constitutive to the point that to take them apart to make clear how the group humans affect nonhumans is misleading and may create more problems than solutions. In social-ecological hybrids human interests, concerns and doings shape the system dynamics and need to be accounted for. We will illustrate this point with help of symbolic and semiotic theories beginning with the American anthropologist Leslie White’s declarations that the emergence of the symbol is the most radical thing in evolution since the origin of life (White 1940). White suggested, in line with European schools of structuralism and semiotics, that the human ability to understand and interpret rests on our ability to read signs. Signs can be words, images, sounds, smells, acts or things. A reading of Mary Douglas (Douglas 1986) suggests that signs belong to human cultures and do not have singular mean-ings, every sign is a complex universe in itself. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something (Chandler 2007). Since humans are reflex-ive in their very being, the interpretation of appearances as signs oc-curs all the time. Interpretations can be in line with familiar systems of

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conventions, e.g. locally shared culture and memories (Geertz 1977), or global popular culture and media (Appadurai 1996). In the dynamic context of research and management, signs “come to signify in ways that that no particular author or speaker can constrain in advance through intention” (Judith Butler quoted in Murdoch 2006, 8), imbued with a degree of ambiguity and instability. For example, one of the first questions of this thesis research concerned traditional forest con-servation in Androy. What did the forest patches in Androy “appear as” to the Tandroy clans that made them want to protect them with taboo institutions? In contrast, these forests “appear” in ecosystem management research as “biodiversity hotspots” or key patches in “landscape connectivity” (Papers III&IV). We will investigate this question, and the importance of addressing multiple appearances in parts that belong to social-ecological systems (SES) with help from Wittgenstein’s “rabbit-duck” thought-experiment. The Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was interested in the relation between a word and an object with multiple meanings, or appearances. He introduced his inquiry by establishing that: “Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands” (Wittgenstein 1953, I). However in the world the issue of applying words to objects is not as clear-cut as in written text. In the world new appearances unfold continuously. (Or life in a social-ecological system is uncertain since it undergoes continuous and nonlinear self-organization.) When peo-ple consequently apply word to the object-like appearances they are faced with, they engage in what Wittgenstein calls “language-games”, because the words and the objects will continuously shift meanings. The image of the “rabbit-duck” illustrates how sometimes many words and their meanings apply to the same object (Wittgenstein 1980, I 75). The rabbit-duck is an image that simultaneously appears as a duck and as a rabbit (Fig.1).

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Figure 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s rabbit-duck However, for someone who has seen a duck, but never a rabbit, the image will only appear as a duck, and vice versa. The lesson I would like to take from the rabbit-duck example is that appearances in the world will appear like objects as we/you/I know them2. If we do not know them, but find them significant, we will make them objects with a property and a name. “The names in language name objects – sen-tences are combinations of such names” (Wittgenstein 1953). How-ever, in everyday life a person who sees the rabbit-duck but who only knows of the rabbit will say “I see a rabbit”, that person will not say, “I see it as a rabbit”. In recognizing that this everyday act may occur, indeed it occurs in the world all of the time, a dilemma arises for so-cial-ecological systems research. Either social-ecological analysis will ignore that the parts that are identified and defined as bearing certain ecological functions will also have other appearances to individuals and social groups. In this sce-nario social-ecological researchers can continue to map how ecosys-tem processes and functions play out, explaining to inhabitants who 2 The surrealist painter Rene Magritte (1898-1967) did thought-experiments similar to Wittgenstein in his art. For instance, Magritte did a series of paintings on the theme “The Treachery of Images“ (La trahison des images) (1928-29). A reoccurring composition portrays a pipe in naturalistic fashion and a text below that says “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Indeed, strictly speaking the painting “is” not a pipe, the painting consists of patterns of paint that “appear” in the shape of a pipe.

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reside in these landscape that “regardless of what you hold this land-scape to be, or how you yourself make use of it, it is these ecosystem functions that we have identified that are what should be preserve”. This scenario can still be deeply social-ecological, only it decides for the humans a priori, a kind of ecological elitism, what is to be valued, what is to be managed and goes about researching and reporting on evidence of such valuable findings to the scientific community, to students to policy-makers. Such a scenario has the shortcoming of not being able to take into account and make visible how humans in the social-ecological system shape the system in their interests and with their activities. Considerations of the social-ecological systems, other than the ecological structural-functional, are ignored. The alternative outcome would be that social-ecological analyses seek to address the multiple ways in which a social-ecological system and its constituent parts are conceived and related to by the social actors in the “SES”. The use of the quotation marks around is intentional since, agreeing to explore multiple meanings of a SES by the key social ac-tors who sustain will involve opening up for alternative and competing interpretations and the researcher as well as the manager need to de-cide which to include and exclude. A rabbit-duck in the dynamics If different groups of people interpret an emergent phenomenon in several ways, then those interpretations will be of relevance for how the groups will, or will not, value and manage that phenomenon. In case the ways in which the phenomenon is managed are incompatible there may be a conflict of interest. Take the story about “Fitzcarraldo and the Natives in the Amazon” as an example:

Fitzcarraldo is set at the end of the 19th century. Fitzcarraldo, the protagonist has a vision to build an opera house in the heart of the Amazonian jungle. To raise the money he comes across a government lease for rubber tree exploitation. The plot is situated deep in the forest, on the other side of the ‘Pongo rapids’ that no boat can pass. Fitzcarraldo, however, knows of a parallel river that will take him upstream above the rapids. Then, all he needs to do is drag the 70-ton steam-boat over a slope covered with rain forest vegetation and down into the correct river. However, the boat crew deserts when they realize that the land is inhabited by headhunters. Fitzcarraldo is abandoned. But unexpectedly the headhunters

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come to his aide. It turns out that the headhunters believe in an ancient myth that one day a white god in a white boat will come to liberate them. Fitzcarraldo is quick at seizing the op-portunity. He announces that “this God will not come with cannons, but with the voice of Caruso” and dressed in a pan-ama hat, a white linen costume, with a portable gramophone that plays Italian opera, Fitzcarraldo persuades the headhunt-ers to work for him. They succeed in dragging the boat up the jungle slope and slide it into the river just above the water-falls. However, after an evening of festivities, Fitzcarraldo wakes up to the sound of metal against rock and gushing river rapids. The boat is going down the rapids, with the gramo-phone playing Caruso like a mocking reminder that the opera house in the middle of the Amazon jungle will never be built. It is only later, that the spectator realizes that Fitzcarraldo had only understood the first part of the native legend. The full legend went: The white god would (1) arrive in a white vessel to bring salvation by (2) sacrificing the white vessel to the powerful spirits residing in the “Pongo Rapids”.

In Fitzcarraldo the boat turned out to be a rabbit-duck, with two radi-cally different meanings and purposes. Fitzcarraldo wanted to use the boat to ship rubber to sell at the market. The natives wanted to use the boat as a sacrifice to the spirits in the river. Fitzcarraldo did not care much about the motives or concerns of the natives, but it turned out that their interests were fatal to Fitzcarraldo’s enterprise. If the rabbit-duck is not a boat, but a living complex system, things become much more difficult. Complex systems change themselves throughout life and shape and are shaped by their living environments. Such systems continue to self-organize while the researcher go about describing them and putting them in an interesting context. When a description is finished, the described system will already be slightly different. If we address the dynamics of a grassy savannah SES we will study the parts, the relations and feedbacks of the savannah SES. In this re-gard the subject appearing like a “lion” regulates several ecological functions for savannah system resilience as a top predator, the lion is also a food source, a nutrient disperser, and a producer of methane (cf. Norberg and Cumming 2008, 9). But the “lion” is also an individual organism and a living self-organizing system in itself with resilience to handle disturbances. Some humans (e.g. Deep Ecologists) transpose

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intrinsic value on lions such as this one. Moreover, this lion is part of a flagship species for the safari tourism (also conceivable as a system), it is a historical trophy kill for Maasai males who undergo the transi-tion to becoming adults (moraan) in Maasai communities (also sys-tem). And the lion is a fetish to powerful men such as the Emperor Haile Selasse who kept two lions chained in front of his palace, and much much more. How these values and appearances attributed to “lion” travel and influence outcomes is difficult to say, but like the butterfly effect (Lorenz 1972) and heterarchy theory (Crumley 1995; Crumley 1994, 186-87) suggest, strong drivers may come from unex-pected places outside humanly conceived scales and ordered hierar-chies. I hope to have shown with this savannah SES example how recogniz-ing and following the rabbit-duck into the hole (as one might say) does not end the dilemma, but creates new ones. The only question is how deep we are ready to go? In living systems the issue of interpreta-tions of objects and their function-meanings is ceaseless . At the end someone, the researcher or the manager or perhaps the two in unison, will have to agree to decide which depth of interpretation is reason-able to go with which subject of study. And then set about organizing from there. Which of these interpretations of the lion living in the sa-vannah SES is to be considered in the management for savannah resil-ience? Ultimately what this question does is challenge a combined claim in complex adaptive systems theory. On the one hand the suggestion that the theory is value neutral, on the other that it should be used in natu-ral resource management (Byrne 1998; Norberg and Cumming 2008). While the theory can describe how macroscopic phenomena have changed by self-organization, it cannot explain how the same phe-nomena will self-organize in the future. Hence if CAS is to be useful in management, it will have to be by taking CAS thinking and orga-nize and decide using it. But the decisions are still situated and made in relation to value judgements. That they are value judgements is inevitable considering that it is people, subjects, who make them (as opposed to the great forces of nature or God). To prepare or enable for self-organization to occur is also deciding and organizing. Organizing always kicks in before self-organizing (at least to humans), they may occur at the same time. But only one of them is applicable to people. It is even so in life that not deciding, is

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paradoxically also deciding. In conclusion we see that at the other end, (the Deep SES), of the rabbit-duck dilemma rests decisions, political decision, moral decisions, and the question of how to best organize while respecting that the larger self-organization will remain mysteri-ous.

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Research Design

This doctoral thesis has combined a diversity of methods from both the social and natural sciences, such as landscape ecology, ethno-graphic fieldwork, film analysis, and text analysis. This approach has been chosen to address social as well as ecological processes. The different methods are expanded on below. Case Study (Paper I, II, III, IV) To study the key social-ecological livelihood dynamics in southern Androy and how they related to cultural notions of moral and well-being we conducted landscape ecological and ethnographic fieldwork.

Fieldwork was conducted in two blocks (3 and 2 months long), during rainy season, cyclone season (Mar-May 2005), dry season and drought (Oct-Dec 2006). A third period of 4+ months of fieldwork was planned for 2009-2010, but cancelled because of political instabil-ity in Madagascar following the coup against former president Marc Ravalomanana in March 2009. Landscape ecology was researched through transect walks as-sessing forest patches, agricultural plots, and floral visitors. Transect walks combined observation, inventory, interviewing, GPS and GIS mapping, photography and fieldnotes. During these walks, a minimum of two local representatives were present, as well as one or two Mala-gasy scholars who engaged as researchers, translators and cultural in-termediaries.

In fieldwork you may know the units you are interested in but not necessarily what that unit means or relates to the person, group or species that depend on, and sustain them. Ethnographic inquiry en-gages in the interpretation of the meaning of those units (Lofland and Lofland 1984, 93). In this way “the observer follows the actors in or-der to identify the manner in which these define and associate the dif-

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ferent elements by which they build and explain their world, whether it be social or natural” (Callon 1986:4). Participatory observation, or part-taking in daily life and events sug-gested from interviews to be of significance: market day, farming, cat-tle-herding, funerals and meetings to settle disputes with local law. First-hand experiences were documented by writing naturalistic field-notes (Emerson et al. 2007) and performing photographic documenta-tion (Ball and Smith 2007). Interviews were done in semi-structured and open narrative styles (Lofland and Lofland 1984; Spradley 1979). The semi-structured in-terviews followed pre- established themes of concern and were trian-gulated with observations from transect walks, village life or small everyday events. The research also emphasized narratives and encour-aged interviewees to articulate their storied understandings and con-cerns (Spradley 1979). Repeated interviews were conducted with heads of lineages, traditional authorities on customary law, farmers recognized for their knowledge with farming. We also did literature reviews of livelihood, landscape ecology, an-thropology, archaeology, history and colonial studies that were con-trasted with an interview study with regional experts. The names of people and places were changed in some descriptions when it was considered appropriate to respect confidentiality and sensitivity of accounts.

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Comparative analysis (Paper V) To investigate the relationship between resilience and social-ecological memory (SEM), a comparative analysis between the well-known Medieval Norse Greenlanders, often portrayed in historical research and popular science, and the less known Tandroy society in Madagascar (described above) was conducted. By comparing the two cases, the analysis reviewed the chain of causation by which SEM becomes a source of social-ecological resilience or a barrier to adap-tive governance. The study of the Norse Greenlanders draws on sec-ondary sources and reviews the critical points of current knowledge on the collapse of the Norse society. The findings from the literature re-view were then used to reinterpret central theoretical claims on rela-tionship between resilience and memory, and make clearer the factors whereby SEM becomes a source of resilience. In so doing, it aims to identify factors of key importance for transformations in social-ecological systems.

Box 1: Androy

Androy, located at the southern coast of Madagascar, is an ecological hotspot with a high number of endemic plants species. The name Androy means spine, but is often trans-lated as “land of the spines”. In the southeastern part of the region roundly shaped forest islands are dispersed in the agricultural landscape. Most, if not all, of these forest patches are sacred forests that belong to territorial clans and are protected by taboos. This is the ancestral land of the Tandroy people, the “people of the spines”, with a popula-tion density of 150 pers./km2 (around 650,000 inhabitants). Among the Tandroy, four out of five depend on subsistence farming and livestock, very few are fishermen. The area is remote and only accessible with lorries or 4WDs because of the sandy roads. The area is one of the poorest in Madagas-car, partly because of its erratic and arid climate (<450 mm rainfall per year), and climate change scenarios suggest the region will become more dry.

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Film analysis (Paper VI) In Modernity at Large (1996) Arjun Appadurai writes about the force of imagination – expressed as dreams, songs, myths or stories- and the role that such imageries have taken in the organization of societies and their environments. In particular Appadurai stresses how the emer-gence of mass media opened for the spread of imageries on scales that were previously unknown of (Appadurai 1996). This doctoral thesis analyzes the movie Avatar to explore how local ecological knowledge and ethical concerns associated with the production of environmental expertise become integrated into (or rejected by) resilience thinking, in particular by the emerging research framework provided by plane-

Box 2: The Norse Greenlanders

The fjords of southwest Greenland were the westernmost settlement for the Norsemen who traveled westwards from Scandinavia past the British Isles, Iceland and all the way to America. Two major settlements existed between 900s-1400s with a total of 5,000 inhabitants (at most). The Norsemen lived in farmsteads in a similar fashion as in Scandinavia with diary cattle. In Greenland at the time also lived indige-nous Eskimo and Thule Inuit groups who were mobile seal and whale hunters using the kayak and the harpoon. With the Little Ice Age agropastoralism became a more harsh way of life and eventually the Norse settlements collapsed and the Greenlander Norse died out with little record in the Norse sagas. The Inuit on the other hand survived.

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tary boundaries. As a methodological framework, environmental film critique aims to 1) stimulate discussion about the historical, cultural, and ideological dimensions of contemporary representations of nature and of environmental issues, and 2) investigate how images are shaped by and influence our perceptions and attitudes about the non-human world (Willoquet-Maricondi 2010, xiii). Environmental film critique can therefore draw attention to the ways knowledge about social-ecological systems are constructed, made legitimate, and medi-ated across different contexts. In so doing, it may challenge our per-ceptions of nature and norms guiding human-environmental interac-tion.

Box 3: Avatar

Avatar is a science-fiction film that was released as one of the first 3-D films in 2009 by James Cameron. The film is set in the 22nd century and is about the planet Pandora and the human mining operation currently taking place in the thick forests, despite of resistance from the Indigenous peo-ple the Na’vi. Dr. Grace Augustine is a scientist on a mis-sion to understand the ecology of the forests that hold sacred importance to the Na’vi. With time Dr. Augustine and the scientists get fascinated with the indigenous groups knowl-edge and come to support the struggle to protect the planet from mining exploitation by the humans. The film received acclaim from critics and the audience. The film was the highest grossing film in history with two billion dollars, seen worldwide by more people than any previous film.

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Figure 3. Map of Androy (from Paper III).

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Results – Summary of papers

I. Trees and Tree Planting in Southern Madagascar The aim of the paper was to analyze the role of tree and tree planting in Androy, based on the hypothesis that tree planting and greening practices are a fundamental response to crisis (Tidball and Krasny 2011). In the arid agricultural landscape south of route 10, near Am-bovombe, the capital of Androy, trees and forests often have important symbolic meanings that tell something about the history of the groups of people who live there, their practices, politics and the roles they credit different tree species in the landscape. From a social-ecological resilience perspective we found that trees and tree planting contribute to at least two key functions: 1) trees are planted as or become sign posts or manifestations of re-membrance of significant events involving death, and 2) trees are planted as a symbol of sealing agreements or order in society. For ex-ample, Tamarind trees (Tamarindus indica) signified historically es-tablished friendship alliances between clans. The Didiereaceae Allu-audia procera was often found by resting places where the corpse had been placed during a burial march, as well as next to ancestral tombs situated inside fragmented forest patches. Culturally, planting trees serves as a symbol of renewal, purification, agreement and boundary-making. Trees represent a cultural reference and identity that is essen-tial for the continuation of society. Ecologically, planting trees con-tributes to the generation of ecosystem services in an otherwise de-nuded landscape with drifting sand dunes (see more paper II-IV). The emergent and existing trees and forests play a key role in maintaining human wellbeing as perceived by the Tandroy, carrying memory in the landscape of heritage and ancestry and historical crises.

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II. The role of sacred forests in crop pollination and local livelihoods Bodin et al. (2006) suggested that the forest patches in Androy were essential for generating crop pollination services. This paper sets out to test this relationship empirically. Earlier studies testing the role of fragmented forest for crop pollination services have focused on com-mercial crops, while this study emphasize the importance for local livelihoods and health. Androy is one of the poorest regions in Mada-gascar and subsistence dependence is high. In this regard beans (Vigna sinensis and Niger Lablab) constitute an important protein staple. We addressed the pollination effect on bean yields and to which extent the fragmented forest patches in the agricultural landscape were insect habitats and thus contributed to landscape pollination capacity. We conducted an experiment to study if pollination had effect on the production of Lablab beans. We also surveyed the correlation between sites for bean farming and distance to forest patches to see if more beans grew closer to the forests than far away. Finally we conducted interviews and surveys to map bean farming strategies and the role of beans in the household economy. Our results indicate a significant effect of insect pollination on yields of Lablab purpureus, and a strong spatial pattern in location of beans plots, located closer to forests than expected by chance. Surveys among farmers also revealed a high reliance on beans for annual household income and for the rural food security. We discuss how the co-constitutive human-nature dynamics in this empirical study challenge ecosystem service frameworks to consider regulating, provisioning and cultural services as emergent and there-fore not easily separated and studied in isolation. III. Adaptive capacity of indigenous forest institutions Paper III takes a biodiversity management perspective and addresses the adaptive capacity in indigenous forest management in Androy, southern Madagascar with regard to religious and climatic drivers of change. The study was set against the literature on sacred forests and the role of taboos in biodiversity management in which social taboos

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have been considered ‘invisible’ institutions although the underpin-ning rationales for such institutions may not fit standard conservation agendas and praxis (Colding and Folke 2001), and where studies have suggested these forms of non-Western management to be in decline and disappearing with changes to do with modernization (Schoffeleers 1979; Sheridan and Nyamweru 2008). The study focused on how forest taboo institutions in one commune in south Androy adapted to two drivers of change: (1) migration as a response to erratic rainfall, and (2) the increase of Christianity in the region. The study combined field work data created during a series of field-work periods between 2003 and 2007 using semi-structured in-terviews (with forest managers, state and non-state officials and church representatives), a school survey on attitudes on traditions and modernity, and GIS mapping and analysis of forest dynamics. During analysis we identified several aspects of the management of taboo forests that nurtured adaptive capacity and thus contributed to the specific resilience of the taboo forests and the communities that rely on them. These included (1) a short feedback loop between peo-ple and ecosystems, (2) a place-based cultural identity that is shared across religious and clan geographical divides, and (3) mechanisms for conflict resolution and reorganisation following violation or fault. However, we also found an expanding cleft in the society between ancestral cultists and Christians, which could present a challenge for the future relevance and use of the taboo institution in Androy. This paper concluded that taboos forest institutions were adaptively associated with Tandroy beliefs, knowledge and practices. To deepen understanding about how taboo forest institutions change, future stud-ies could address what indigenous management traditions treasure and seek to sustain themselves in this endemic biodiversity hotspot. IV. The social-ancestral contract Paper IV combines complex adaptive systems theory (e.g. Norberg and Cumming 2008), with the political philosophical imaginary ‘con-tract’ (e.g. social contract), to explore the historical robustness of the agropastoral Tandroy subsistence economy. While robust, this subsis-tence form has also been historically vulnerable, regularly collapsing only to be reinstated. In this regard the agropastoral regime has been

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described in the development literature as a poverty trap that people need help to get away from (a “general resilience” argument). The cultural and ecological analyses of a Tandroy contract had two rationales. Firstly it was held to be a way to articulate how legitimacy, morality and well-being were expressed in Tandroy social-ecological management. Following on this, we investigated if the practices con-ducted to maintain such a contract contributed to sustaining the ro-bustness of the agropastoral livelihood regime. The study was con-ducted using ethnography and landscape ecology to relate cultural conceptions about well-being and their contractualised forms with management practices and key events. We identified a social-ancestral contract. This contract was established in the birth into the clan. Ancestral ta-boos, and norms framed livelihood activities to concern agriculture and cattle-herding, and where livestock was the bank, as well as ritual capital. Cattle was necessary both in customary gift prestations be-tween and within kinship groups, but also as sacrifice to ask for bless-ing, purify transgressed taboos and most importanty during ancestral funerals in tribute and to grant the deceased entrance to the ancestral tomb in the forest in the landscape. In this way the social-ancestral contract builds meaning into the agropastoral regime, making agropas-toralism an ancestral activity to be associated with pride, but it was also a burden to bear including the taboos and costly expenses in time and wealth during ceremonial events. But changing the way of life, for instance towards fishing, to evade the cyclical reoccurring poverties would in the customary perspective require negotiations with the an-cestors on whom the living depend, and who in turn care for the living and the future of the clan. In this way the social-ancestral contract can be considered as social attractor whose shared moral order kept the social-ecological dynamics in a relatively stable state. V. Memories as a source of general and specific resilience Paper V takes its cue thinking about the robustness found in certain social-ecological management traditions (such as the Tandroy agropastoral example in Paper IV). The paper revolves around the need to have adaptive management traditions in an uncertain and rap-idly changing world. In this regard, how come management traditions

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become robust, and how can the robustness be overcome and give way for adaptability, innovation or transformation? Robustness can also be called “specified resilience”. Specified resilience is defined as the capacity in a social-ecological system to manage specific changes and disturbances and sustain the main functions and processes. But from the diversity argument where two different ways of ensuring a livelihood is better than one, the pur-suit of specified resilience does not protect from unforeseen distur-bances. What is more, the focus of attention on a specified part of the bigger social-ecological dynamics will turn a manager blind to the larger dynamics (for instance if the pursuit of specified resilience erodes the general resilience in the system.

To address resilience in a system, it is thought important to have access and be able to draw from the accumulated experiences of a social-ecological system, its memory. Resilience theory thus pro-poses that to overcome the risk of getting stuck in traps or inertia, de-cision-makers in a management tradition should draw from the expe-riences retained in the social-ecological memory.

Testing this theoretical idea in two examples we simply see that this does not happen. In the Androy case study the Tandroy are agropastoralists, their neigbours the Vezo are fishermen. Hence in this system there exist memorized experiences from fishing and agropastoralism, yet no Tandroy (very few) are fishermen, not even during droughts and famines. In a similar way the Norse Vikings who settled as farmers on Greenland went extinct during the Little Ice Age, despite the fact that they lived in contact with the Thule Inuit who survived by being mobile fishing and hunting for seal and whale with kayaks and harpoons.

To get from one’s own specific memories and experi-ences of a social-ecological system, to also consider the diverse and more general memories of other management traditions require some-thing more. We speculate that it has to do with conditions in which it is possible to imagine those “others” ways of living as maybe some-thing that you, yourself could do. This is in line with resilience think-ing, where rememberance often is brought in from outside the system undergoing change. Recombining different memories may lead to novelty and innovation. To do so one might have to evoke interest, concern and self-identification. These acts of crossing and recognizing memories are difficult to do if there are barriers between groups of people such as racism, competition, hostility or food taboos.

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VI. Works of doubt and leaps of faith Paper VI can be seen as a way of making the concerns of the Tandroy in southern Madagascar travel the planet, and is thus an attempt to translate it into knowledge with global relevance. The scope, in the shape of a challenge, emerged while analyzing data and writing arti-cles and chapters on a diverse set of topics encountered in Androy and that were previously foreign to me. With resilience thinking I made management suggestions concerning people in Androy in terms of challenges and improvements. This is not unusual, living system re-searchers are expert producers and brokers of knowledge and thus permitted, perhaps even demanded to travel and work at different places in the world (cf. Pielke Jr. 2007). But this is work that also brings with it responsibilities and obligations since researchers will agree to carry and pass on skills, experiences and sincere concerns expressed by those who cross their way. Certainly, researchers will seek to address their specific concerns with data from the field that in this regard will be bundled, hybridized and placed in new (con-)texts. Still an ethical obligation remains that is not entirely different from other kinds of contracts, to keep in mind the perspective of the infor-mants in knowledge production negotiations, the ideals of critique, accuracy and respect is thus broader than the science-policy arenas. In this regard, this study is the response to a voice that came all the way from the field, merely overlooking the work that is being done “over here”.

The specific knowledge and management tradition (and social-ancestral contract) of the Tandroy can be recognized as one of a diversity of knowledge-management traditions that exist on Earth, and generically referred to as Traditional Ecological Knowledge, TEK (Berkes 1999). Resilience theory has stressed the need to take into account a diversity of knowledge and management traditions (includ-ing TEK) in mutual respect, as well as to increase and richen under-standing about the overwhelmingly complex dynamics of the world. In this regard it has been suggested necessary to consider and bring together indigenous, local and scientific knowledge in adaptive co-management processes in social-ecological systems (Folke et al. 2003; Chapin et al. 2009). In this context, the article takes a “leap” from Androy in southern Madagascar to the international arenas and ongo-ing thinking, synthesizing and decision-making about well-being for

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humanity on a planetary level in millennial (or even Holocenic) time perspectives (exemplified by the Planetary Boundaries project; Rockstrom et al. 2009). This synthesising work-in-progress, like many others, brings together years of knowledge and experiences of many people, but it is only able to host one recent and very specific kind of knowledge, namely the scientific. This article proceeds to illustrate some small phenomena present in the world that are invisible in this science-based epistemic frame, but that may very well be of critical importance to the people who live within its boundaries. For instance, the Tandroy and the sacred forests that are the resting places for the ancestral tombs.

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Discussion

The work with this thesis has sought to address the following objec-tives. 1. Develop ideas and concepts to analyze the relationship between management, social-ecological systems and well-being. This has been done combining an interpretive concern with culture and moral, with resilience thinking. 2. Contribute to the understanding of resilience and the interplay be-tween specific and general resilience. 3. Contribute to the understanding of applied complex adaptive sys-tems theory in social-ecological systems research from an interpretive perspective. 4. Contribute to the understanding of combing and relating different knowledge and management traditions from ethical, political and di-versity standpoints. The above theoretical undertakings have come about in analysis of:

• Situated case studies (Androy, Greenland, Pandora [in Avatar])

• Global knowledge constructs (Ecosystem services; Planetary Boundaries) In the following three sections I will discuss the objectives to establish some wider implications for research and policy. I will begin with current challenges to agropastoralism livelihoods in Androy.

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Engaging in conversation about the management challenges in Androy In Androy population growth and increasing dry-spells have been noted the last fifty years and both are trajectories that continue. Al-ready this is a semi-arid area where nutritional well-being in the popu-lation is vulnerable and dependent on food relief and school cantines run by international organizations. The agropastoral regime described in Paper IV is the basis of roughly 80% of the subsistence in the area. It is vulnerable to droughts, but highly robust. This robustness has many sources, but a uniting attractor we defined as the social-ancestral contract. A religious and existential imagery that was manifested dur-ing key events and daily practices in the Tandroy social-ecological system. It is a contract that defines and conditions the life of individu-als as members of a clan whose ancestors gave them life and thus should be respected. Living clan members cultivate ancestral land, follow ancestral customs and laws of the elders council and sacrifice cattle during key ceremonies, law regulation and burials in clan for-ests. The ancestral contract thus frames the space and valorizes certain social and ecological phenomena (cattle, forests, cacti) and people (kinship, marriage alliances) through which many notions of well-being in Androy is pursued. While bearing the tradition of ancestry and clan is as burdensome in Androy, as it is in other parts of the world, most Tandroy tried hard to do so. It is worth pointing out that similar forms of contract between the living generation and the ances-tors, expressed in funerary rites and attached to clan origin sites is historically widespread on the African continent (Mbiti 1992; Shorter 1977; Binsbergen 1981; Sheridan and Nyamweru 2008). But also among Austronesian societies (Lansing et al. 2011), in a recent com-parative study of Austronesian-speaking peoples the editor introduces general patterns Austronesian societies: "Austronesian-speaking peoples articulate their personal sense of be-longing to particular places and lay claim to land or other territorial rights by invoking local histories of ancestral origins and migra-tion...origin histories are also inscribed on the physical landscape in the form of sacred sites, and on the minds of local participants through their shared experience of ritual performances held at these sites. To-gether these commemorative social practices generate a powerful sense of belonging and emplacement” (Reuter 2010).

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The Tandroy agropastoral regime has been called a poverty trap be-cause its historical inability to provide nutrition during dry-spells (Bidou 2007; Bidou and Droy 2007; Bidou et al. 2006). The distance between a key Tandroy concept of well-being, that is to possess a thousand heads of cattle (mpanarivo) and a recent household survey suggest that most households in Ambovombe (60%) own no cattle at all (WFP 2009, 5), is alarming and both justified and urgent to ad-dress. However, the strong interdependence in Tandroy society be-tween ancestry and ancestral respect, identity, key social and life-stage events and the tradition of agropastoralism makes shifts to other way of living difficult. The connection between peoples and management traditions is strong in Madagascar; the Merina rice farmers; the Vezo fishermen and the Tandroy pastoralists. Though converts from other peoples are found among the Vezo (and they are most likely not unique in this regard) (Astuti 1995). To diversify thinking about management traditions and social-ecological dependence would require loosening up differences between Malagasy groups (e.g. with the Vezo). As well as communi-cating broader externally, although for reasons in the colonial and state history the Tandroy are suspicious against advice from strangers (Middleton 1999; Parker Pearson 1997). There are other obvious ex-ternal supported changes that could be done such as the long-held dream that someone will build a water pipeline into Androy from Anosy to the east. Well-being, culture and resilience The papers in this thesis have explored how groups (mostly clans) of people have morals and culture that bear on constitutions of well-being and which kinds of social-ecological relations that are managed. Interpretive analysis can articulate how people as individuals or groups themselves perceive, value and conduct social-ecological man-agement. The resilience perspective, explored in the history of the Norse, introduces into management contexts a concern with survival. Regardless of moral and culture, groups of people need to relate to changes in their environment, or they and what they cherish will dis-appear. To combine an interpretive and a resilience perspective makes it pos-sible to address the interplay in adaptive forms of management be-

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tween the known, agreed upon and appreciated on one hand, and the novel, changing and unknown on the other. Recognizing the need for management to be adaptive opens for impor-tant questions and decisions. If life is inherently complex and dynamic the issue of adaptation is not restricted to some, everything living adapts as part of life. That said, when humans are faced with the ques-tion of minor and more major adaptations the question of how to di-vide benefits and burdens of adaptation still remains. Considering the increase in co-dependence and entanglement locally, regionally and globally these are important issues to address not just within manage-ment traditions, but also between them. Diversity of management and knowledge traditions The field Natural Resource Management (NRM) has a name that poses some problems to the resilience tradition. First of all, it seems to support the Society-Nature dichotomy, and a view of nature as a static resource. These are two modern legacies that resilience researchers have tried to get away from (Folke 2006). Secondly the word “man-agement” poses similar concerns for its popular associations with a type of organization that is hierarchic, sector-based, and efficiency oriented according to principles of economic self-interest (wikipedia.org/wiki/Management). Contrary, resilience research has emphasized the valuable in first-hand knowledge and practices held by practitioners, stakeholders who have broad experience, interest and concern in the studied issue. In larger issues, such as the management of a city, a wetland or a fishery resilience researchers have proposed the value of taking into account a diversity of knowledge from differ-ent actors doing different things with regard to the issue of concern (Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes 2009; Acheson 1988; Schultz et al 2007; Cundill and Fabricius 2009; Gunderson et al. 2008; Armitage et al. 2007). These forms of adaptive co-management, or adaptive govern-ance processes have often included researchers and other kinds of ex-pertise (Armitage et al. 2007). Situated management traditions across the world have been found to operate along similar lines of adaptive management: traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), local ecologi-cal knowledge (LEK), indigenous knowledge (IK) and social-

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ecological memory (Gadgil et al. 1993; Colding 2001; Colding and Folke 2001; Olsson and Folke 2001; Fabricius et al. 2006; Olsson et al 2004; Gunderson et al 2008; Armitage et al. 2007). Similarly, Elinor Ostrom’s research on common pool resources has also suggested that people in different countries and cultures perceive, value and relate to it, including management styles, in different ways, are capable of de-vising collective institutions for managing natural resources in sus-tained fashions (Ostrom 1990). In this regard many scholars have explored scientific and academic knowledges as some of many more knowledge traditions (Latour and Woolgar 1986; Haraway 1988; Tambiah 1990). Difference and simi-larity between knowledge traditions have been suggested to be under-stood by paying attention to how they are negotiated and assembled (Turnbull 2000, 38). Turnbull suggests that the contemporary domi-nance of scientific knowledge over other knowledge traditions has been based on two major positions (Turnbull 1997). The first is the “imperialist” by which scientific knowledge is believed to be superior because of its rationality and methodology, making claims at objectiv-ity or universal relevance and therefore right to examine the truthful-ness of other knowledges. The second is the “localist” position, by which all knowledge is held to be situated within a particular set of values, and has ways in which knowledge is produced, valued and applied. New forms of decision-making that can take into account the diversity of knowledge and management traditions have been considered one of the most important ways to address complex and uncertain problems, as well as respecting differences and integrity to land in forms of common and sensible agreement. Fikret Berkes calls for discourses that explore how management traditions can be linked at multiple lev-els, “The era of expert-knows-best management is over...the more complex the system under consideration is, the greater the need for deliberation in the process of collective judgment and interpretation” (Berkes 2007, 15193). In this regard resilience researchers seem to share an interest in work-ing as brokers and translators of diverse knowledge and management traditions, by making them visible, describing their work and by pro-viding frameworks to combine them. Not just by making “resilience” a fuzzy concept that can therefore work as a boundary object for inter-

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disciplinary research (Brand and Jax 2007). This work has also en-abled for diverse knowledge and management traditions to travel. This is not insignificant considering that management traditions with high knowledge of social-ecological dynamics in a part of the world often lack the means as well as the skills and formal requirements for communicating management insights on national or intergovernmental levels. As Fikret Berkes has remarked, Western scientific methodol-ogy "happens to be the dominant knowledge system by far, and the one used as the basis of environmental decision-making by centralized bureaucracies throughout the world' (Berkes 2007, p.1648). The asymmetric relationship between (and within) sciences and other knowledge traditions is problematic since it makes invisible the diver-sity of knowledges, skills and management that exist in the world. But it places a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of researchers inter-ested in diverse management traditions that cannot travel the world. To keep in mind the situated values, and conceptions of well-being: What forms of planetary reasoning, management and knowledge tradi-tions are going to improve our lot? (cf. Turnbull 2000 p.211). Article III, IV and VI in the dissertation suggests that this work with making diverse knowledges travel is in an early, proto-Science stage. Rabbit-duck, complexity and diversity In “Perfect Order”(Lansing 2006) the anthropologist Stephen Lansing described the millennia old rice-irrigation system in Bali. He noticed how up-and-down stream rice paddies were mutually co-dependent in a fashion that people locally could not overlook, much less control. Nor was there a central control, yet as a complex system the irrigated rice-cultivation system self-organized into a dynamic well-functioning order. Simply put Lansing suggested that this order was the reflection two simple controls that had to be coordinated between sites (subaks) and were generic to the whole irrigation system (the need for water to cultivate, and the need to make the fields dry to control pests). Moreo-ver order was gradually established from the continuous and shared attempts by farmers to honor and transpose the religious cosmic order of the Goddess of the Crater Lake (the source for all the water), in their daily lives (especially the rice production). In this matter the re-

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ligious-cosmic order of the Balinese served as an attractor for adaptive rice management practices unfolding over time. Lansing’s description bears similarities to my own research where the social-ancestral contract can be seen as an attractor that the Tandroy relate to and reify in their many specified and ritualized activities and in so doing mediating specific social-ecological relations (Paper IV). It is also similar to the way philosopher Charles Taylor (2004) used the concepts “moral order” and “modern social imaginaries” to ex-plain how, despite the mess, we may still talk about a Western moder-nity that has slowly come about and continued to change over centu-ries. Finally it resembles conclusions from Elinor Ostrom, Carl Folke, Johan Colding, Fikret Berkes and colleagues from synthesizing re-search about knowledge and management systems where emphasis is placed on their gradual evolution and the importance of trust and shared understanding for processes of collective natural resource man-agement to be successful and for social-ecological systems to emerge (Ostrom 1990; Berkes et al. 1998). Portrayals of, let us call them, social-ecological attractors and the so-cial-ecological systems they shape and bring resilience to, become ordered and well-assembled by the analysis of the parts and the feed-backs between them. In this emergent description of a de facto stable pattern there is little use, and thus little room for alternative interpreta-tions or contestations. It may useful in this regard to reflect about the Tandroy agropastoral regime (Paper IV). This regime was investigated and assembled seeking to respond to the question why agropastoral-ism was the dominant mode of livelihood in Androy, despite the fact that was also historically vulnerable. The agropastoral regime is thus an attempt to group and relate symbols of moral and cultural signifi-cance to the Tandroy in a way that make certain social and ecological entities in Androy mutually interdependent. In the final analysis this regime has robustness because people re-establish its parts in relation to a social-ancestral contract and is valid given the translation of the empirical data to fit complex adaptive systems theory. Hence, it is not certain that the organisms rallied and disciplined in this system–the cattle, the cacti, the forests, the crops etc–can be said to identify and sympathize with their management regime. Secondly, the people in these villages that form part of, and manage the agropastoral regime and who (according to me and my co-author) relate to the ancestral contract in the daily practices, will also perceive the regime and its

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desirability and key practices differently. As an illustration we can mention social differentiation in terms of class (historical relations between clans of nobles, vassals and slaves), gender (influence over clan history, identity and decisions correlate strongly with male gen-der and age), religion (Traditional Tandroy vs. Protestant and Catholic Christians). If this account had focused less on investigating the mys-tery of the agropastoral provisioning services, and instead given cer-tain individuals, or sociological categories more voice, other social-ecological imaginaries might have been visible. We can relate this issue of selecting interpretations in Paper IV to the “rabbit-duck” dilemma (see Theory section). From the moment we chose to investigate the culture, social life and ecological dynamics among the Tandroy for connections to agropastoralism, we began to gather selected entities from the world and placed them in a new little universe. And every entity that was gathered was defined with regard to its relevance to the growing list of other entities deemed relevant to the existence of agropastoralism. A similar data gathering work was done into a parallel universe of ecological samples, numbers and fre-quencies seeking to verify hypothetical relations to agriculture and livestock. The point is that in these selections, other rabbit-duck as-pects of included entities were for the most part missed and excluded. The rabbit-duck symbol can be helpful in reminding about the exis-tence of “other” diverse ways of making social-ecological relations and systems. In creating systems we articulate specific pathways and make alternative paths or interpretations difficult to conceive. Instead it is easy to want to begin to build resilience and value into this newly identified system.

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Conclusion

• The societies and ecologies of the world are increasingly held to be changing in interrelated ways. Addressing sustainability concerns in situated as well as planetary contexts require an increased ability to combine knowledges and management tra-ditions to explain and discuss how integrated multi-sited, multi-species connections and changes do, and should, occur.

• This thesis has investigated the field Resilience Thinking con-

tributing to a perspective of the world as consisting of complex adaptive systems in which human groups manage specified so-cial-ecological relations in fashions that can be explained by analysing how cultures and morals inscribe significance and meaning into these relations. In this way a shared moral order of a group can work as an attractor building robustness into specified social-ecological relations in spite of disturbance and change.

• While complex adaptive systems theory has convincingly been

used to explain integrated macroscopic patterns of change and stability in wide set of natural and social scientific fields, its usefulness for managing and governing social and ecological relations remains unclear.

• Specifically this thesis suggest that usefulness will depend on

the ability of complex systems analysis to convincingly take into account the myriads of interests and symbolic manifesta-tions of people operating within a defined system. It will also need to address the shift from using CAS to conduct value-neutral explanations of past events to making situated and sub-jective management decisions (e.g. enabling organization for self-organization).

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• In Androy in southern Madagascar dryspells that lead to agri-cultural drought and famine is the major challenge to liveli-hood security and well-being. Irregularity and prolonged dryspells have worsened together with an increase in popula-tion since, and the region has increasingly been referred to as a poverty trap. This can be considered an issue of getting water and broad investments on societal infrastructure to Androy on a long-term basis.

• The Tandroy are agropastoralist who have combined and sus-tained specified social-ecological relations over centuries. This thesis suggests that the robustness of this Tandroy agropastoral social-ecological system can be understood by analysing Tan-droy morals and cultures related to agriculture and zebu cattle.

• The perceived contract by which ancestors and living in Tan-droy clans were existentially co-dependent granted and mor-ally conditioned the living Tandroy rights, laws, knowledge and memory about the land, the agriculture, the forests and the cattle. The social-ancestral contract was important in defining Tandroy clan identity and their strong sense of place. The con-tract can be understood as an attractor that explained how resil-ience emerged in a specific set of social-ecological relations, because it justify the re-establishing of the agropastoral regime after collapse following drought and famine.

• The agropastoral regime combined cultivation as the main source of subsistence and income, and cattle as sacred and economic capital necessary as sacrifice during events with an-cestral communication (restoration of laws, thanks-giving, fu-neral rites) and as gifts during key social events (birth, mar-riage, death).

• In summary, addressing different pathways in the Tandroy so-ciety to decrease poverty and climatic vulnerability will also involve interpretive rabbit-duck explorations of cultural and moral imageries “in” and beyond the ancestral contract.

• Experiences, concerns and challenges in the Tandroy man-agement traditions have with this thesis been made to travel, to possibly be coordinated in multi-sited management of social-ecological relations. Researchers have historically become knowledge brokers who establish critical connections. This is a role that involves accounting for multi-sited moral obligations.

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Rowing backwards into the future is the full title of this thesis and it has become suiting over time. Rowing looks simple but requires some skill, as well as figuring out relations to help determine which direc-tion to go and who and what to bring along. When at sea it is neces-sary to make do with what there is and while the boat is always mov-ing the oars, stars, senses, birds, smells, tools and sharing work with company give a good chance of getting your motley crew somewhere you want.

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Sammanfattning på svenska

Senmodern humaniora och vetenskap har kommit att ifrågasätta olika former av uppdelningar mellan människa och samhälle på ena sidan, och natur och ekologi på den andra. I ämnet naturresurshushållning kan denna trend skönjas i ett intresse för ekosystemsförvaltning och komplexa adaptiva social-ekologiska system. Komplexitetsteori syn-liggör hur sociala och ekologiska processeser är hybridiserade och betonar dessutom vikten av en förvaltning som kan hantera osäkerhet, överaskningar och chocker, t.ex genom att bygga resiliens, en ka-pacitet att hantera förändring, återhämta sig från störning och vara beredd på överraskningar. Adaptiv förvaltning med erfarenhetsbaserat kontinuerligt lärande och experimenterande och en strävan efter att bibehålla diversitet och redundans inom systemet betonas i detta avseende. Skiftet till att integrera det “sociala” och det “ekologiska” till social-ekologiska system medför ett behov av att undersöka hur diversitet och skillnader i mänsklig och social intentionalitet, såväl som kultur och moral kan sägas existera och relatera.

Denna avhandling–baserad på fältarbete, teoriutveckling ge-

nom kombinationer med ekologisk ekologi och miljöhistoria och filmstudier–har undersökt hur kultur och moral kan kombineras med forskning kring resiliens och social-ekologisk förvaltning.

Artikel I-IV sammanfattar fältarbete kring agro-pastoralister (boskapsuppfödare med småskaligt jordbruk) i Androy, södra Madagaskar. Artikel I beskriver landskapsekologiska och kul-turella aspekter av trädplantering. Artikel II testar ekologiskt hur heliga skogar i ett fragmenterat jordbrukslandskap bidrar till gener-ering av pollinationstjänster till bönproduktionen, där bönor utgör en viktig proteinkälla. Paper III studerar källor till resiliens och kapacitet till förändring i de lokala institutioner som förvaltar och skyddar de heliga skogarna och de landskapsekologiska funktioner som de bidrar till att upprätthålla. Paper IV analyserar den agro-pastorala praktikens historik, kultur och moral i relation till den regim av social-ekologiska

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relationer som återfinns i landskapet. Den agropastorala regimen är historiskt sårbar mot Androys torra och oregelbundna klimat, men har också varit historiskt robust. Tandroyfolket, vars samhällsorganisation består av klaner, organiserar stora delar av agro-pastoralism och den social-ekologiska ordningen genom ett sk. förfädrafördrag som bek-räftas vid beslutsfattande såväl som begravningar i heliga skogar, un-der vilka boskapsoffer är en viktig komponent av den rituella kommu-nikationen med förfäderna. Starka relationer mellan religion, politik, den agro-pastorala praktiken och de social-ekologiska landskapsproc-esserna kan förklara den historiska robustheten. Paper V undersöker länkar mellan kulturell identitet, politik och specifika förvaltnings-former i Androy, såväl som i den medeltida bebyggelsen av skandinav-iska nordmän på Grönland. I båda fallen (agro-pastoralister) uppstår över historisk tid nära samband mellan kultur, identitet, politik och ekologi och i dessa, relativt isolerade, relationer finns resiliens att hantera och uthärda förändringar och utmaningar från utsidan. Men alla utmaningar går inte att motstå och ändå överleva, den Grönlänska kolonin försvann till stor del för att klimatet blev för kallt för agro-pastoralism. Androy är en av de fattigaste regionerna på Madagaskar. Denna studie föreslår att social-ekologisk förvaltning måste finna sätt att skapa ett kontinuerligt samspel mellan specialisering å ena sidan och generalisering å den andra. Diversitet är viktigt, men lika viktigt är att skapa möjligheter till identifikation och att tillgå andra förvalt-ningsformer än sin “egna”, här är mellan-kulturell medling viktigt såväl som att skapa tillgång till andra förvaltningsformer att förhandla inom ramar för egen moral. Paper VI handlar om forskarens roll som producent och medlare av kunskap inom social-ekologisk förvaltning på lokala och globala nivåer av beslutsfattande utifrån en analys av filmen Avatar. Vi diskuterar hur ett demokratiskt fördrag tilldelats forskare med unikt mandat som kunskapsproducenter, medlare och rådgivare mellan en mångfald av social-ekologiska kontexter och för-valtningstraditioner. När forskare får kunskap att färdas från labora-torier och fältplatser har de en moralisk-epistemisk skyldighet inte bara mot sina likar (‘peers’), utan även mot sina informanter och de förvaltningstraditioner som kritiskt översätts och analyseras för nya sammanhang.

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