Article

Dialogues in Human Geography

2017, Vol. 7(2) 166185
Response assemblages and The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/2043820617720079
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Conceptualizing human
responses to environmental
degradation

Helen Briassoulis
University of the Aegean, Greece

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

Keywords
assemblage, environmental degradation, human responses, ontology, socioecological fit, socioecological
resilience, socioecological systems

Introduction
Management and policy interest in the effectiveness
of human responses to environmental degradation
has produced a voluminous scientific literature.
Corresponding author:
Helen Briassoulis, Department of Geography, University of the
Aegean, Mytilini, Lesvos, 81100, Greece.
Email: e.briassouli@aegean.gr
Briassoulis
Effective responses foster desirable and avert unde-
sirable impacts, thus safeguarding the integrity of
critical ecological and human functions that secure
the uninterrupted provision of ecosystem services
and, consequently, enhance the sustainability of
development at all levels (MEA, 2005a). From an
institutionalist perspective, human responses to
environmental degradation (human responses hen-
ceforth) depend on institutions, that is, clusters of
rights, rules and decision making procedures that
give rise to a social practice, assign roles to partici-
pants in practice and guide interactions among occu-
pants of these roles (Young, 2008a: xxii) and
include formal constraints (rules, laws, constitu-
tions), informal constraints (norms of behavior, con-
ventions, and self-imposed codes of conduct) and
their enforcement characteristics (Folke et al.,
1998: np). In this vein, the issue of the effectiveness
of human responses aligns with the problem of fit,
a term encompassing a wide-ranging theoretical and
empirical exploration of how the match between
institutions and their biophysical and social settings
determines their effectiveness (Folke et al., 1998;
Ostrom, 2007; Young, 2008a). The question that
arises is thus the following: how to assess the fit
of human responses to their socioecological setting
in order to support management, planning, and pol-
icy decisions? This article posits that the answer
critically hinges on the conceptualization, and more
specifically on the underlying ontology, of the
object of analysis: human responses.
Human responses are usually conceived nar-
rowly as distinct, isolated response options (actions,
practices, instruments) targeting directly the
resources impacted and/or the drivers and proximate
causes of environmental degradation, and involve
five types of action: development, prevention, adap-
tation, mitigation, and restoration/rehabilitation
(MEA, 2005b). Response options include tools of
sustainable land management (SLM), environmen-
tal legislation, fiscal/economic instruments, and so
on and are usually assumed to be homogeneously
distributed and uniformly implemented. The policy
and academic discourse predominantly focuses on
best practices and proper policies; see, for exam- call for a broader conceptualization of human
ple, UNESCO (19942003), World Overview of
Conservation Approaches and Technologies
167
(2014), and several initiatives of the UN, OECD,
and other international bodies. The tacit assumption
is that if the right incentives are provided, people
will pursue best practices that will effectively
combat environmental degradation.
Ample empirical evidence has shown, however,
that response options, including best practices, do
not always work as expected. Their outcomes are
difficult to categorize, and their successful transfer
to different contexts is challenging because both
environmental degradation and human responses
are contextual and contingent (Berkes and Folke,
2000; Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987; Lejano and
Shankar, 2013; Ostrom, 2007; Prince, 2010).
Depending on prevailing conditions, people may
choose to continue business as usual (no action),
to engage in more resource-intensive activities
(negative responses), or to undertake formal and/
or informal actions to combat environmental
degradation (positive responses). Positive
responses, those that succeed to produce desirable
and forestall undesirable impacts, preserve the
integrity of critical ecological functions, which is
essential for the continuous provision of ecosystem
services and, thus, contribute to sustainable devel-
opment (MEA, 2005b).
The empirical evidence resonates with policy
and scientific developments pronouncing the end
of One-Size-Fits-All (OSFA) solutions, recom-
mending instead participatory management and
governance modes, such as adaptive (co)manage-
ment, and suggesting novel approaches to concep-
tualize, theorize, and analyze environmental
problems that abandon linear and espouse non-
linear thinking. The latter are exemplified by the
ecosystem approach, the Complex Adaptive Sys-
tems (CAS) paradigm, Resilience Thinking, the
Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) framework, as
well as by the contextualist turn in the social
sciences and multidisciplinary studies (Berkes
et al., 2003; Folke et al., 2010; Gunderson and
Holling, 2002; Lejano and Shankar, 2013; Ostrom,
2007; Walker et al., 2004; Young, 2008b).
These changes in scientific and policy outlook
responses. This is reflected in the Millennium Eco-
system Assessments all-encompassing definition:
168
. . . responses are defined as the whole range of human
actions, including policies, strategies, and interven-
tions, to address specific issues, needs, opportunities,
or problems. A response typically involves a reaction
to a perceived problem. It can be individual or col-
lective; it may be designed to answer one or many
needs; or it could be focused at different temporal,
spatial, or organizational scales. (MEA, 2005b: xv)
The emphasis added underlines the recognition of
the multifaceted, multilevel, contextual, and
dynamic nature of human responses, suggesting that
they might be better approached as responses-in-
context, that is, place- and time-specific, planned/
formal, and/or unplanned/informal actions emer-
ging from multilevel human decisions to utilize
environmental and other resources to directly and
explicitly tackle environmental degradation and/or
address other individual and collective socioeco-
nomic goals in affected areas.
This approach attends to the coevolutionary
dynamics of SESs and dispenses with the need for
fixed response typologies and the assumption that
affected populations are primarily interested in
environmental protection. Moreover, it accounts for
the vagaries of policy implementation that differ-
entiate the instantiation of a particular response
option in the same place under changing circum-
stances or in different places under different condi-
tions. Thus, it encompasses the possibility of human
actions serving other purposes to alleviate environ-
mental degradation and of dedicated response
options failing to produce desired outcomes. Also,
it necessitates rethinking best practices and their
effectiveness as a question of fit, that is, how well-
adapted response options are to different socioeco-
logical settings.
What then is the nature of the reconceptualized
object of analysis, responses-in-context? This ques-
tion necessitates a discussion of suitable ontologies
to support meaningful analysis and sensible policy
guidance. The rich past and current environmental
literature treats the issue either implicitly or mini-
mally. Reductionist epistemologies conceive of
SESs as wholes (totalities) and panarchies, while
nonreductionist epistemologies conceive of SESs as
networks of interacting biophysical and human
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
components from one or more levels (DeLanda,
2006b; Galaz et al., 2008; Janssen et al., 2006;
Walker and Cooper, 2011; Welsh, 2014). This arti-
cle argues that whole/panarchy and network ontol-
ogies are incompatible with the responses-in-
context concept and inadequate for the integrated,
context-specific analysis of human responses.
Embracing a nonreductionist ontology, its modest
aim is, first, to propose and detail the response
assemblage as a suitable analytic to represent
responses-in-context, and, second, to redefine the
fit of human responses to their socioecological set-
ting as the socioecological fit of the response
assemblage, which will support an assessment of
response effectiveness. Toward this purpose, it
synthesizes assemblage theory and the problem of
fit literature (Folke et al., 2007; Young et al., 2008)
within a CAS/resilience perspective.
Assemblage, a concept and term long used in
ecology, geology, archaeology, and the arts, has
been employed, since the mid-1960s, in several
other fields, such as geography, sociology, anthro-
pology, political science, and urban and regional
studies. Describing diverse, dissimilar phenomena,
all uses of the term share a common concern with
the process of coming together of heterogeneous
elements into dynamic, provisional, revisable wholes
in a given context (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011;
Anderson et al., 2012). Allen and Cochrane (2007)
discuss regional assemblages of power, Head
(2010) mentions adaptation assemblages, Dovey
(2012) analyzes complex adaptive assemblages in
urban Third World places, Sheppard (2011) refers
to livelihood assemblages, while Robbins and Marks
(2010) call assemblage geographies those forms of
analysis and explanatory strategies developed around
the notion of assemblage that are employed in
sociomaterial geography.
DeLanda (2002, 2006a, 2006b, 2011), adopting
the epistemology of critical realism and building on
the work of the French philosopher Deleuze, has
concisely formulated the contemporary account of
assemblage theory to offer a nonreductionist
ontology for the analysis of sociospatial phenom-
ena. Assemblage theory, or, more broadly, assem-
blage thinking, is a particular stream of relational
thinking that opposes taxonomic essentialism,
Briassoulis
rejects binaries, stresses the material aspects of phe-
nomena, and supports a conception of a mind-
independent reality. It attempts to overcome the tra-
ditional reductionist approaches to systems analysis
and to link the microlevel with the macro level
through a nonhierarchical, flat ontology that stresses
the emergent nature of fluid, multifunctional socio-
spatial formations where each level of scale retains
a relative autonomy and can therefore be a legiti-
mate unit of analysis (DeLanda, 2006b: 118). The
next two sections briefly review the literature on
assemblages and the problem of fit. The fourth and
fifth sections detail the response assemblage (RA)
and its socioecological fit (SEFRA), respectively.
Implications for future research on theorizing
human responses and their effectiveness, develop-
ing integrated methodologies, and guiding decision-
and policy making are discussed in the conclusion.
On assemblages
The constitution of complex SESs, comprising mul-
tifarious biophysical and human components, is var-
iously conceived, and depends upon, the
epistemology and the associated view of space
adopted. Positivist, essentialist accounts conceive
of SESs as totalities (seamless wholes) possessing
a clear and distinct nature in absolute (geometric) or
relative space. Nonpositivist, relational accounts
conceive of them as multiplicities defined by sets
of entities that are not pregiven but continuously
becoming from processes that mesh SES compo-
nents in a multidimensional, relational space that
lacks a supplementary (higher) dimension impos-
ing an extrinsic coordinatization, and hence, an
extrinsically defined unity; these entities are, thus,
natural and immanent (DeLanda, 2002: 12).
Drawing on social constructivism, actor network
theory conceives of them as networks, while assem-
blage theory, being akin to critical realism, con-
ceives them as assemblages (DeLanda, 2002,
2006a; Faras, 2011; Gale and Boterill, 2005). A
fundamental ontological difference between net-
works and assemblages is that the former prioritize
the network (its components/nodes obtain status
only within the network), while assemblages assign
ontological autonomy to both the components and
169
the assemblage, as the following discussion further
details.
Assemblages are compositions of diverse, onto-
logically heterogeneous, cofunctioning compo-
nents, or actors, into some form of provisional,
irreducible, decomposable whole that serves an
overt or covert purpose. The form of this unity
across differences, its durability, the human/nonhu-
man and material/immaterial elements involved,
and the types of relations among them are not a
priori fixed but remain deliberately open (Anderson
and McFarlane, 2011; Bennett, 2005; DeLanda,
2006a, 2011). Assemblages are characterized by
their style of structuration (Bennett, 2005), that
is, their composition and processes of assembly.
Their components, such as persons, animals, plants,
minerals, organizations, culture, and technology,
have variable spatial and temporal extent and reach
and play material and expressive roles (Anderson
et al., 2012; Bennett, 2005; DeLanda, 2006a).
Relationships of exteriority link the components
of an assemblage because they are relatively auton-
omous; a component may be detached from one
assemblage and inserted into another (Anderson
et al., 2012; DeLanda, 2006a). This contrasts to
relationships of interiority characterizing positivism
that views entities as organismic wholes, where the
linkages between components form logically neces-
sary relations which make the whole what it is
(DeLanda, 2006a: 11), as well as to social construc-
tivism, where components are determined by their
position within a network (Anderson and McFar-
lane, 2011; Anderson et al., 2012). Assemblage
theory views the temporary, provisional, and fra-
gile relationships among the heterogeneous com-
ponents as contingently obligatory (DeLanda,
2006a), rendering an assemblage . . . a continuous
process of movement and transformation as rela-
tions and terms change (Anderson et al., 2012:
177). The likelihood and strength of the relation-
ships depend on the combining power (valency) of
the components (Dewsbury, 2011).
The processes of assembly of biophysical and
human (economic, social, cultural, institutional)
components that bring assemblages into being or
pull them apart comprise (a) processes of (re)terri-
torialization and of coding that increase the degree
170
of internal homogeneity (coherence) and/or the
sharpness of the boundaries of an assemblage and
(b) processes of deterritorialization and of decoding
that disrupt its coherence and blur its boundaries.
The repeated occurrence of these processes
generates populations of assemblages, of unique,
singular, historically contingent individuals. Onto-
logically, any assemblage is an individual singular-
ity (DeLanda, 2006a, 2011) that possesses a
characteristic identity.
Assemblages and their components possess
properties, capacities, and tendencies. Properties are
local results of interactions between entities. They
refer to actual states of affairs and they are given and
known (or knowable) (Anderson et al., 2012). The
properties of assemblages are not aggregations of
the properties of their components but the result
. . . of the actual exercise of their capacities. These
capacities do depend on a components properties
but cannot be reduced to them since they involve
references to the properties of other interacting enti-
ties (DeLanda, 2006a: 10).
Capacities are powers an entity possesses,
regardless of whether these are exercised or not.
They are open and unpredictable since there is no
way to foretell how an entity may affect or be
affected by innumerable other entities with which
they associate (Anderson et al., 2012). The set of
possible capacities of the components, especially
of critical/limiting components, constitutes the pos-
sibility space of an assemblage which is paralleled
to the phase (or, state) space of dynamic systems
(DeLanda, 2002, 2006a). Critical components usu-
ally change more slowly than other components;
hence, the term slow variables is used in contrast
to fast variables. Their number determines the
dimensions of the possibility space, that is, its
degrees of freedom. A basin of attraction, a region
in the possibility (state) space in which an SES stays
for some time, constitutes all initial conditions that
will tend toward an attractor; that is, a final (mini-
mum) state to which different trajectories of the
SES, starting from some point in the basin, end up
(DeLanda, 2002). Attractors represent patterns of
behavior and reveal the long-term tendencies of an
SES, the states which the system will sponta-
neously tend to adopt in the long run as long as it
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
is not constrained by other forces (DeLanda, 2002:
15). DeLanda (2006a: 29) calls attractors universal
singularities because they are singular or special
topological features that are shared by many differ-
ent systems. The set of all universal singularities
(attractors), called a diagram (Deleuze, 1988, cited
in DeLanda (2006a: 30), structures the possibility
space of an assemblage and governs the recurrent
assembly processes. Identifying the possibility
space of assemblages, and thus, exploring their ten-
dencies, is purely an empirical matter (DeLanda,
2011).
Real-world complex SESs have multidimen-
sional possibility spaces, complex distributions
of attractors, and multidimensional basins of
attraction that can be considered as the locus of
populations of RAs (individual singularities)
emerging from processes of fitting together hetero-
geneous components, copresent and cofunctioning
in particular historical contexts. SESs can be con-
ceived as changing positions within a basin. Each
position, that is, point (state) of the basin, is an
actual assemblage shaped at a particular conjunc-
ture in space and time by contingencies that influ-
ence its style of structuration. Thresholds of
critical components, that is, tipping points between
basins of attraction, may force an SES into another
basin, characterized by assemblages with a differ-
ent identity.
Causality in assemblages is emergent and non-
linear, located not in a pre-given sovereign agent,
but in interactive processes of assembly (Anderson
et al., 2012: 180), and immanent, resting with the
inherent capacities of critical components to be cau-
sally affected and their thresholds (DeLanda, 2002,
2006a). The emphasis of the analysis is on the actual
mechanisms operating at a given spatial scale and
on explaining how the provisional formations
emerge through the non-deterministic enactment
of practices of world-making (Anderson et al.,
2012: 181) that crucially link the microlevel with
the macro level (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011;
DeLanda, 2006a). A range of causal factors may
produce different assemblages under different con-
ditions (Anderson et al., 2012). DeLanda (2006a)
calls redundant causality the existence of many
equivalent explanations.
Briassoulis
Once assemblages emerge they are real because
they are causal agents capable of acting back on the
materials out of which they are formed (DeLanda,
2006a: 35), enabling or constraining the relation-
ships among their components, affording them
opportunities and risks. The identity and agency of
assemblages is distributive and composite due to
their style of structuration. The routinization and
habitual repetition of territorialization/coding pro-
cesses stabilizes the identity of assemblages and
maintains it in the presence of destabilizing deterri-
torialization/decoding processes. Conflict sharpens
their boundaries and identity (DeLanda, 2006a).
Power distribution is decentralized because assem-
blage connotes not a central governing power, nor a
power distributed equally, but power as plurality in
transformation (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011:
125; Bennett, 2005). This . . . rethinking of agency
provides a way of describing how different agents
within the assemblage may possess different
resources and capacities to act . . . (Anderson
et al., 2012: 180).
The emergent, geographically and historically
contingent socialspatial entities sustain over a cer-
tain period before they change when their compo-
nents and/or their relationships change, suddenly or
gradually, under the influence of single or multiple,
large or small, external or internal forces (Anderson
and McFarlane, 2011; Anderson et al., 2012;
DeLanda, 2006a). Some assemblages, at various
spatial scales, may maintain a fairly stable socio-
spatial identity for long periods (DeLanda, 2006a).
But durability in form does not imply fixity (Ander-
son et al., 2012). As Legg (2011: 129) notes,
Deleuze also portrayed assemblages as leading to
order, striation, re-territorialisation, long-term
effects and scaling as much as to dis-order, smooth-
ing, de-territorialisation, short-term effects and
de-scaling.
The preceding presentation reveals the similari-
ties of assemblage theory with various articulations
of complexity theory, such as the CAS paradigm,
resilience thinking, and the SES framework (Gun-
derson and Holling, 2002; Ostrom, 2007; Walker
and Salt, 2006), as each draw on the mathematics
of nonlinear systems. The nonreductionist assem-
blage, rooted in Deleuzean philosophy, draws
171
attention to the dynamic, multilevel and emergent
constitution and evolution of open, self-organizing
SESs and phenomena, emphasizing their nonlinear
behavior, positive and negative feedbacks, coevolu-
tion, agencystructure interactions, multiple equili-
bria and thresholds. Assemblage theory elucidates
the ontology of real-world complex SES as multi-
plicities defined by assemblages (individual singu-
larities); they are thus the indispensable ontological
foundation for their analysis and governance (Bonta
and Protevi, 2004; DeLanda, 2002, 2006a). Mean-
while, complexity theory provides a conceptual
language for understanding how assemblages work
over time (Dittmer, 2014: 391).
The brief presentation of the main features of
assemblages shows that they differ from the other
two SES ontologieswholes and networksin
several respects. Lacking a dedicated study, Table 1
tentatively compares the three ontologies along
criteria reflecting their propensity to offer valid
representations of real-world SESs. On this basis,
it is argued that assemblages offer a suitable ontol-
ogy to represent responses-in-context and guide
their analysis.
On the problem of fit
Fit, an age-old concept, is used in two principal and
interrelated senses. The first refers to suitability for
a purpose, while the second refers to matching
between two or more objects in terms of size and
other characteristics (the hand-glove analogy); the
purpose of fit is implicit in the latter (Folke et al.,
1998, 2007; Hukkinen, 2012).
Although the notion of fit has long been implicit
in studies of humanenvironment interactions (e.g.
Marsh, 1965), the seminal paper of Folke et al.
(1998) on the problem of fit between ecosystems
and institutions marks the beginning of the contem-
porary discussion. They start from Young and
Underdals (1997) definition that the problem of fit
asserts that the effectiveness and the robustness of
social institutions are functions of the fit between
the institutions themselves and the biophysical and
social domains in which they operate (quoted in
Folke et al., 2007: np). They further explain that fit
concerns the linkages of institutions to functional
172 Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)

Table 1. Comparison of the three ontologieswhole/panarchy, network, and assemblage.

Issue/
dimension Whole/panarchy Network Assemblage

Epistemology Positivism, post-positivism Social constructivism Critical realism

View of reality Observable, measurable No real, mind-independent Mind-independent reality
reality
Taxonomies Preexisting classes and scales General symmetry assumption: No symmetry assumptions,
No preexisting classes (e.g. classes given and emergent
nature, society, gender, and so
on)
Conception of Absolute, geometric, relative Relational, multiplicity Relational, multiplicity
space
Scale Predefined, pregiven hierarchies Flat ontology, relationally Flat ontology, individual
constructed singularities, Scales assembled
relationally by particular
interested actors, but
unbounded and
dynamic . . . some
configurations crystallize
The nature of Reductionism, abstract Nonreductionism, human and Nonreductionism, relatively
actors and categories (essences), nonhuman actors have the autonomous actors,
their relationships of interiority, same ontological status and asymmetries between human
relationships logically necessary they are network effects; and nonhuman; human
relationships (systemic) acquire their form and reflexivity; humans reason,
attributes as a result of their have intentions, motives, and
relations with other actors in pursue interests, relationships
the network, relationships of of exteriority, contingently
interiority, network obligatory relationships
relationships
Agency Agency of the whole Agency of the network: Agency of wholes and parts,
Mediated achievement autonomy of the assemblage
relative to its components
History/ Externally given, exogenous Selectively considered in the Fully considered in the analysis of
context variables analysis of networks assemblages
Power No consideration Relational, practical, contingent Existing and emergent power
network; an achievement asymmetries
Methods of Quantitative Qualitative (ethnographic) Mixedquantitative and
analysis qualitative
Sources: Gale and Botterill (2005), Duim van der et al. (2013), DeLanda (2002, 2006a), Muller (2015), Bear (2012), Collinge (2006), Legg
(2009).

diversity, key structuring processes, and ecosystem
resilience. The Institutional Dimensions of Global
Environmental Change program similarly defined
fit as a matter of match or congruence between the
attributes of institutions and wider governance sys-
tems and the dynamics of biophysical systems
(Galaz et al., 2008, Young, 2008a).
The literature on the problem of fit has exam-
ined various types of institutions and several
interpretations and operationalizations of human
environment relationships. Most studies adopt the
match of characteristics sense and treat fit as a
more or less binary/dichotomous (fitmisfit), nor-
mative notion with positive connotation (fit is
good). Thus, an environmental governance system
is fit when there is compatible matching between
an institutional setting, associated ecosystem prop-
erties and properties of social-ecological relations,
Briassoulis
and when it performs well over the long run and
proves to be more resilient to shocks than a less
structured system (Hukkinen, 2012: np).
Most empirical studies within this tradition focus
primarily on the impacts of environmental and
resource institutions on ecosystems, with strong
emphasis on environmental management and insti-
tutional design as well as with mechanisms and stra-
tegies to cope with mismatches and achieve an
optimal fit. The important role of social, economic,
cultural, and political institutions and factors, espe-
cially social learning and property rights, is duly
acknowledged. Both formal and informal institu-
tions are examined, although the distinction
between the two is often blurred. A typology of fit
has been developed, and the interrelated issues of
fit, interplay, and scale have been explored (Folke
et al., 2007; Galaz et al., 2008; Young et al., 2008).
The gradual development and adoption of the
CAS paradigm and resilience thinking, as well as
the contextualist turn in humanenvironment
studies, have contributed fruitful analyses of less
studied, implicit, or neglected problems. The mul-
tifaceted real-world context of humanenviron-
ment interactions is better represented given that,
by definition, the notion of fit is contextual (Folke
et al., 1998; Galaz et al., 2008; Haller et al., 2013;
Vatn and Vedeld, 2012). As Lejano and Shankar
(2013: 89) note, Fit is an outcome of multiple
processes: material exchange, political action, and
influences by the local culture; they offer a con-
textualist definition of fit that accounts for program
implementation: Institutional fit . . . is . . . emer-
ging from an interplay between text (the constitu-
tive blueprint) and context (the specific setting).
Similarly, Haller et al. (2013: np) observe, a pos-
itive fit to social-environmental systems has to be
adapted to key elements of the cultural landscape
and ecosystem in place . . . and also to the political
landscape. The variability of fit, owing to stake-
holders framing of problems and solutions and to
contextual factors, is acknowledged (Lebel et al.,
2013). Echoing the interpretation of fit as adaptation
of an entity (or, act, etc.) to the environment as to be
capable of surviving (Merriam-Webster), Cox
(2012: np) notes that the existence of a fit between
two objects can be usefully thought to mean that they
173
relate in such a manner so as to produce a desirable
outcome and that there really is no such thing as an
overall fit of a system . . . . A system could be fit
with respect to one outcome and not to another. The
commonly accepted criterion of fit is the preservation
of socioecological resilience (SER) as reflected
in proposed measures (Folke et al., 2007;
Galaz et al., 2008).
The literature on fit, however, makes little or
no reference to the ontology of the systems
studied, although its definition and operationali-
zation inescapably reflects the pertinent under-
lying assumptions. A common tacit assumption
is that the biophysical and the human systems
are either interlinked or interconnected, that is,
they constitute either a network or a systemic
whole, respectively, with relationships of inter-
iority linking their components (Holling et al.,
1998 cited in Ostrom, 2007; Folke et al., 2007;
Galaz et al., 2008).
Overall, a broader conception and a comprehen-
sive approach to the problem of fit and to socioeco-
logical management is called for to encompass the
material, physical, and spatial, together with the
socioeconomic aspects and dynamics of SESs, per-
ception of environmental problems, different actor
perspectives, power relationships and implementa-
tion, that importantly judge the outcome of institu-
tional interventions, among many others (DeCaro
and Stokes, 2013; Haller et al., 2013; Lebel et al.,
2013; Lejano and Shankar, 2013; Vatn and Vedeld,
2012). Interestingly, the contextualist analysis of fit
alludes to assemblages, using the term bricolage to
describe the landscape of institutions (Vatn and
Vedeld, 2012). Lejano and Shankar (2013: 89) put
it succinctly:
Program proponents may combine elements of the
institutional design with other various elements and
institutional models found in place (e.g., local prac-
tices and institutions) . . . hybrid program designs and
institutional diversity result from the different ways
that program actors improvise their institutions. This
process of mixing and matching of elements will be
referred to as bricolage. Here, parts of different insti-
tutional blueprints may be mixed and matched into
something altogether unique.
174
Deleuze had also mused: The question [ . . . ] is
whether the pieces can fit together and at what
price. Inevitably, there will be monstrous cross-
breeds (Deleuze and Guattari, 2003: 157, cited
in Greenhough, 2011: 135). The following discus-
sion aspires to demonstrate that reconceptualizing
responses to environmental degradation as RAs
support a more meaningful and comprehensive
conception and analysis of fit that addresses sev-
eral open issues.
The Response Assemblage
An response assemblage (RA) is a geographically
and historically unique, provisional, open whole
emerging from processes of assembling heteroge-
neous, biophysical and human, material and imma-
terial, mobile and immobile components of a
sociospatial hierarchy into purposeful, place- and
time-specific associations that are shaped by and
shape particular human responses to environmental
degradation. It is a territorial assemblage defined at
a focal level of interest and tied to a mother SES.
The present discussion concerns the regional level,
which has long been considered as the most relevant
for humanenvironment studies and sustainable
development decision-making (Folke et al., 2007;
Hardy and Lloyd, 1994; Lebel et al., 2013; Ostrom,
2007). Regional RAs develop relationships among
them on the same and across levels, both as distinct
entities and through the cross-level relationships of
their components.
An RA possesses a distinctive style of structura-
tion, echoing the responses-in-context conception,
which is reflected in its land use/cover profile and
associated human responses and marks its identity
within a period. Selected biophysical and human
(economic, sociocultural, institutional, political)
components include climate, geology, landforms,
soil, water resources, biota, land cover, landscape;
firms, economic sectors, financial resources, gen-
eral and resource-specific technology; landesque
capital, physical and social infrastructure, settle-
ments, monuments, land uses; individuals, social
and professional groups, organizations, human cap-
ital, social capital, culture, political parties, politi-
cal, business and civic leaders, administrative units,
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
administrators, formal and informal institutions, and
response options. The latter are usually classified
according to spatial/organizational level (local, regional,
national, supranational, international), time frame
(short-, medium-, long-term), institutional origin
(planned/formal, unplanned/informal), and nature of
intervention (type of instrument used) (MEA, 2005b).
Table 2 presents selected response options classified
according to the latter two, most important, criteria.
The RA components have variable spatiotemporal
reach and membership. Some components may
extend beyond the focal (regional) level and last for
long either naturally or by design, such as climate and
multilevel administrative structures; others, such as
individuals, public officials, and business interests,
originate in the local level but act at and represent,
ephemerally or lastingly, the regional or higher lev-
els, depending on their mandate.
The RA components play both material and
expressive roles. The biophysical components engage
in biotic and abiotic processes (soil formation, water
circulation, primary production, etc.) and, together
with socioeconomic components, in economic pro-
duction, distribution and consumption processes;
administrators, political parties, social groups, and
individuals engage in governance processes, and so
on. The landscape expresses the state of resources
(e.g. degraded), the level of development (e.g. poor),
the effects of responses (e.g. mechanized agriculture
homogenizes landscapes), community values (e.g.
traditional, modernizing, caring), and so on.
The importance of the RA components is uneven
and varies over time. Certain critical components
(e.g. relief, culture, governance, political regime),
the slow variables of an SES, play key, regulating
roles, shaping the identity, conditioning the opera-
tion, and steering the evolution of the RA while
faster changing variables (e.g. temperature, product
prices, leaders) may be influential in a period. Once
empirically identified, the number and capacities of
critical components define the dimensions (degrees
of freedom) of the possibility space of an RA and the
distribution of attractors and the associated multi-
dimensional basins of attraction within it, thereby
revealing the tendencies of the RA, that is, the
long-run, spontaneous repertoire of potential/feasi-
ble RAs (land use patterns and human responses)
Briassoulis 175

Table 2. Response options, an indicative list.

Nature of inter- Institutional origin of the response option

vention (type of
instrument) Plannedformal Unplannedinformal

Physical/ Land management practices, including SLM, Informal land management practices,
technological general works, environmental protection landesque capital improvements (e.g.
works, reforestation/afforestation terraces)
Financial/ Subsidies, loans, grants Customary, informal economic sanctions, land
economic PESs, charges, penalties; resource pricing transactions
(water, etc.); general and resource-specific
taxation; research funding
Social Social policy measures (employment, social Informal support groups and so on, informal
services, vocational training, etc.) social measures
Institutional/legal/ International level; international treaties,
administrative conventions, strategies; international bodies
(UN and other); international NGOs
Supranational level, EU legislation, strategies
Natura 2000 network, European NGOs,
multilevel governance networks
National-regional-local level, transcribed Informal institutions, customary land rights,
international and EU legislation, national action customary general and resource use rules,
plans for desertification, biodiversity, and so on; unplanned development (e.g. tourism,
nationalhorizontal and sectoralpolicies, urban), informal land care programs,
legislation, strategies, and so on informal social and environmental groups,
Spatial/land use, rural development, tourism, networks
and other plans; forest and protected areas
management plans; formal land and water
rights; administrativegeneral and sectoral
bodies and networks; national, regional, local
NGOs
Research General, resource-related and environmental LEK
protection funded research
Education/ Voluntary measures (ecolabeling, environmental Informal awareness raising, informal education,
communication auditing, etc.), environmental awareness communication
raising, environmental education,
communication
SLM: sustainable land management; PES: payments for ecosystem services; LEK: local environmental knowledge; UN: United Nations;
NGO: Non-Governmental Organization.

that may emerge as long as external forces do not
constrain the SES.
Relationships of exteriority link the components
of a regional RA generally. Components may exist
and function independently of one another (e.g. soil
and governance) and may have overlapping and
crosscutting memberships; that is, they may belong
to more than one assemblages defined for different
purposes. Farmers may belong to an agricultural RA
and to a farmers union, another assemblage.
Components are continuously added to or removed
from an RA without necessarily being related to one
another, as when modern cultivation techniques are
utilized under the same administrative structure.
Certain relationships among components may be
logically necessary (e.g. in pristine areas, soil loss
is determined by rainfall, slope), but generally, rela-
tionships are contingently obligatory in a period
(e.g. in cultivated areas, soil loss varies with land
management practices).
176
Recurrent processes of territorialization and
coding bring and hold the components of an RA
together in a period. These include diverse, constant
biophysical processes and habitual human practices
that support ecological and socioeconomic func-
tions that secure the generation of ecosystem ser-
vices and the satisfaction of human needs (food,
energy, housing, education, recreation, etc.), goals,
and aspirations. Photosynthesis and water circula-
tion are constant processes supporting primary pro-
duction and regional water balance, respectively.
Formal and informal routine practices and codes
of conduct maintain economic and sociocultural
production, reproduction, consumption and
exchange (i.e. the mode of production) as well as
the use of natural and other resources, intersectoral
linkages, sociocultural and institutional relations,
horizontal and cross-level linkages with other SESs
(e.g. workforce and product flows), and so on. The
routine and habitual repetition of widely adopted
land management, response options, production,
consumption, and other processes stabilize and
maintain the identity of the RA within limits set
by the capacities of critical components.
Meanwhile, deterritorialization and decoding
processes constantly and concurrently operate to,
intentionally or unintentionally, disassemble the
components, potentially destabilizing and/or trans-
forming the RA. These may be endogenous and/or
exogenous, originating in changes (modification,
addition, removal) in the RA components and the
relationships among them. Linkages to other RAs
(that also undergo transformations) can also be
altered, along with forces from other spatial levels,
such as changes in climate, the economy, technol-
ogy, society, culture, institutions (policies, in partic-
ular), and political regimes. Environmental
degradation, once initiated, can be considered a bio-
physically and socioeconomically endogenous de-
territorializing/decoding process. Positive feedback
mechanisms operate to intensify it if it is poorly (or
un-) controlled. Beyond certain biophysical (e.g.
soil, water table) and/or socioeconomic (e.g.
population size, dependency ratio, crop prices,
disposable income) thresholds, land abandonment
and land use change processes set in, especially
under external conditions (e.g. urbanization,
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
socioeconomic crises, tourism development) that
further modify the RA.
General and resource-related technology
changenew cultivars, land and water management
techniques, agrochemicals, machinery, manufactur-
ing technology, transport and communication infra-
structure, and so oninduces changes in several RA
components and modifies economic, social, and cul-
tural relations; the boundaries of the RA; its rela-
tionships with other RAs; and so on. Administrative
changes (in jurisdictions and competences) often
have deterritorializing/decoding effects as well.
Response options, such as land and water man-
agement practices, or policy formulation and imple-
mentation, act both as territorialization/coding and
as deterritorialization/decoding processes. Routine,
widespread, and commonly followed response
options variously and idiosyncratically interweave
among them and with concurrent customary socio-
economic and cultural practices, producing cohe-
sive RAs with a strong, characteristic identity and
sharp boundaries (as evinced in closed, remote rural
SESs). Implementation of new economic, spatial,
social, and environmental policy measures, includ-
ing best practices, may have deterritorializing
effects if they interfere with customary practices and
sociocultural norms or if the necessary implementa-
tion apparatus is missing. In this case, they may be
either rejected outright or they may modify the RA
components and their relationships, giving rise to
new RAs, as when traditional agriculture becomes
mechanized or when agricultural SESs turn into
tourist areas.
The recurrent processes of assembly generate
populations of RAs (response multiplicities) that
represent alternative states of the SES as it moves
within the multidimensional basin of attraction
defined by the critical components in a period. The
RAs that materialize, and the individual singulari-
ties that emerge, represent adaptations of the focal
SES, through place- and time-specific mechanisms,
to changes in the magnitude, influence and impor-
tance of fast variables in the period (e.g. crop prices,
weather) and to historic contingencies (e.g. new
funding, massive outmigration). The latter may also
modify the critical components and the geometry of
the basin. If thresholds associated with critical
Briassoulis 177

components (e.g. soil depth, population size, socio-
cultural acceptance) are reached and crossed, the
SES undergoes transformation, moving to a differ-
ent basin with different characteristic RAs (different
land use/human responses patterns) (Bonta and Pro-
tevi, 2004; DeLanda, 2006a). A territory may host
many RAs contemporaneously and over time,
belonging to the same or to different basins of
attraction within the same possibility space. For
example, an agricultural region may persist for cen-
turies as such; it may have traditionally been culti-
vated with cereals (attractor 1), mechanized
cultivation may have followed (attractor 2), trees
may have partly or totally replaced cereals (attractor
3), while tourism pressures may be gradually driv-
ing agriculture out, converting the agricultural into a
tourist RA (new basin of attraction).
The immanent, nonlinear, and emergent causal-
ity of environmental degradation and of human
responses analyzed in the environmental literature
(e.g. Berkes and Folke, 2000; Berkes et al., 2003;
Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987), thus, owe to the style
of structuration of RAs. The emergent RAs signal
how people have chosen to respond to environmen-
tal degradation over time within the constraints and
thresholds of critical RA components. Limited
knowledge of the complex mechanisms producing
RAs and of pertinent thresholds render their descrip-
tion and understanding knotty, favoring several
equivalent explanations of environmental degrada-
tion and of human responses; that is, redundant
causality is possible or even inevitable.
RAs have fuzzy and variable spatial and tem-
poral boundaries that expand, shrink, and change
shape, following changes in their multilevel compo-
nents and processes of assembly (Allen and
Cochrane, 2007). Conflict may sharpen the bound-
aries and identity of an RA, as in the case of neigh-
boring cultivated and grazing areas or of the urban
fringe. The RA life span may be short, as when a
territory is temporarily under a short-lived produc-
tion regime or protection status, or long, lasting for
decades, as in the case of established agricultural,
mining, or manufacturing regions. The durability of
an RA does not imply fixity because RA compo-
nents are relatively autonomous. A pastoral RA
(cattle raising) may gradually host small-scale,
Table 3. Definitions of properties.
Property Definition
Potential available for Amounts of natural and human
change (potential) resources available in an SES
Robustness Strength of a system and its
elements to endure disruption
without suffering degradation
or losing function
Diversity Variety, disparity of
components, response
options
Redundancy Existence of substitutes for RA
components that support
functioning in case of
disruption
Connectedness Linkages among RA components
(positive/negative feedbacks)
on the same and across spatial
levels
Modularity Organization of components
into groups. Within-groups
are stronger than between-
group linkages
Openness Degree to which an SES interacts
with higher and lower levels
SES: socioecological system; RA: response assemblage.
Sources: Berkes et al. (2003), Cabell and Oelofse (2012), Cum-
ming et al. (2005), Anderies and Janssen (2013), Ostrom (2005),
Alliance R (2007), Rosenfeld (2002), Stirling (2007), Walker et al.
(2004).
specialized agriculture, milk processing and tourism
in its territory that effect internal differentiations
over time but do not disrupt its coherence and
identity.
The components of RAs possess properties
resulting from complex interactions among their
constituent elements as well as from interactions
among them. The SES framework and the resilience
literature give properties such as potential available
for change, robustness, diversity, redundancy, con-
nectedness, modularity, and openness important
roles in environmental change processes (Table 3).
Response options often aim to affect certain RA
components and improve their properties (e.g. SLM
augments water and soil potential and redundancy)
or they may unknowingly worsen them (e.g.
mechanization reduces biological and socioeco-
nomic diversity and redundancy).
178
The properties of the RA as a whole are not tan-
tamount to an aggregation of the properties of its
heterogeneous and unequally important compo-
nents. Instead, they emerge from contextual and
contingent interactions among components, espe-
cially the critical ones, which exercise their capaci-
ties. Resilience thinking axiomatically proposes that
three principal system-level properties determine
the ability of an SES to cope with various endogen-
ous and/or exogenous disturbances and undergo
transitions from one state to another: resilience,
adaptability, and transformability (RAT for short).
All three are expressed as capacities and they are
place- and time-specific functions of the component
properties. Resilience is the capacity of the SES to
absorb disturbance and reorganize while under-
going change so as to retain essentially the same
functions, structure, identity, and feedbacks. Poten-
tial, robustness, redundancy, connectedness, and
openness are component properties that importantly
shape resilience. Adaptability is the capacity of
human actors in an SES to manage, intentionally
or unintentionally, resilience. Diversity, modularity,
connectedness, and openness are important determi-
nants of adaptability. Transformability, the capacity
of actors to create a fundamentally new system
when the existing one is deemed untenable, is
importantly determined by the potential, redun-
dancy, diversity, modularity, connectedness, and
openness of RA components (Folke et al., 2010;
Walker et al., 2004). RAT can thus be considered
as a reduced form of the multidimensional possibil-
ity space of an RA.
RAs possess agency because they act back on
their components, either constraining their relation-
ships, and thus, maintaining the RAs identity, or
enabling them to transform, thus causing identity
change. Established land management, resource
use, and sociocultural practices in agricultural, pas-
toral, forest, tourist, and other RAs are usually
observed by most human actors. In RAs with strong
identity, owing to extreme values of critical compo-
nents (e.g. rough relief, water scarcity, and strong
culture), the role of agency is stronger, and innova-
tions are difficult to introduce if they demand
serious behavioral change. It takes particular con-
tingencies (e.g. favorable markets, external funding,
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
powerful leaders, extreme environmental and/or
socioeconomic events) and strong agents of change
to effect sometimes desperately needed modifica-
tions of the effective composition and/or processes
of assembly that modify or transform RAs.
Agency, identity, and power distribution in RAs
are distributive and composite. Their manifestation
and effects depend on the relative importance, capa-
cities, and contingent combinations of biophysical
and human RA components. Traditional grazing and
associated ways of life in remote, mountainous, pas-
toral RAs endure as long as poor connections with
surrounding and more distant areas persist. Once
connections start strengthening, the original agency
and identity are variously challenged and modified.
National and supranational administrative, policy
and political components, and processes of assem-
bly are often instrumental in maintaining or chang-
ing effective patterns of power distribution evinced
by persistent or altered land use patterns and human
responses in RAs. Systematic or accidental strong
links between national and local/regional leaders
favor the flow of financial resources to, sometimes
chronically and persistently, disadvantaged regions,
contributing to changes in existing RAs, if local
culture permits. The new RAs often reflect the aims
of the national actors; one case in point is the pro-
motion of renewable energy source projects in
remote rural areas that serve national/supranational
energy planning goals.
The socio-ecological fit of the
response assemblage
Having reconceptualized human responses to envi-
ronmental degradation as RAs, the issue of their
effectiveness can be redefined as the SEF of the
RA (SEFRA), an all-embracing redefinition that
may address more satisfactorily several current
issues surrounding the problem of fit.
The RA notion concurs with the fit for purpose
sense of fit. SEFRA concerns the degree to which
the match among all RA components, from the focal
and other levels, serves the purpose for which it has
been constituted, which may not necessarily relate
to combating environmental degradation. The
socio-ecological fit (SEF) of particular response
Briassoulis
options to their biophysical and human setting, in
the matching among characteristics sense, is one
aspect of SEFRA. Given that response options are
RA components, it reflects the degree to which these
further the purpose of the RA.
The relative autonomy of the RA components
and their contingently obligatory relationships
imply that the existence and degree of match is con-
textual and contingent, depending on their material
and expressive roles as well as on changes in com-
ponents and their relationships. Certain compo-
nents, especially some response options, may have
roles that either favor or block, inherently or by
design, the relationships among biophysical and
human components on the focal or across levels.
The dominant power and sociocultural structures,
either deliberately or due to negligence and indiffer-
ence, may maintain weak or no relationships among
certain components (i.e. keep them strongly auton-
omous from each other). Development policies,
usually decided at higher levels, often ignore local
needs. Strong cultural biases impede the adoption of
innovations locally. Centralized governance and
compartmentalized administrative structures seri-
ously impede the integrated management of land
and water resources. Participatory and network gov-
ernance arrangements purport to encourage hori-
zontal and vertical linkages among people,
resources, and so on that facilitate cooperation and
policy integration (e.g. cross-compliance is a EU
(2015) agricultural policy mechanism designed to
secure the adoption of sound environmental and
land conservation practices by farmers in exchange
of direct payments). A thorough analysis of fit
should map the roles and relationships among the
heterogeneous RA components to spot and under-
stand the extent, intensity, and sources of fit and/or
misfit (which components match which ones, how
strongly, and why).
The processes of assembly in an RA provide
another line of inquiry concerning SEFRA. At a
minimum, the existence, however brief, of an RA
means that certain territorializing processes secure
an acceptable (to some actors) degree of match
among certain components that is necessary for the
constitution of the RA as an individual singularity to
serve the purpose (reason) of its formation.
179
Traditional or modern resource use practices link
resource users to local resources through specific
mechanisms that contribute to the maintenance of
their pattern, the constant use of particular response
options and, thus, of the RA.
Deterritorializing/decoding processes that mod-
ify the RA components and/or their relationships
produce changes in the match among them and,
thus, in SEFRA. When new policies are introduced,
their effect depends on the implementation mechan-
isms endorsed and followed. Lejano and Shankar
(2013), drawing on organizational theory, identify
three main mechanisms employed for fitting a pro-
gram (text) to an area (context): specification and
adaptation, improvisation, and bricolage. Depend-
ing on the mechanism, existing components are
rearranged and/or modified, new ones may be
added, old ones may be removed, and so on. In some
cases, the match among components may
strengthen, and the RA is modified (the SES moves
to another place in the basin of attraction). In other
cases, the match may weaken or vanish, rendering
the existing RA misfit. Sooner or later, the RA com-
ponents are reassembled to form a new RA with a
different identity and acceptable fit (to some actors).
Thus, SEFRA is bound to change not only quantita-
tively but also qualitatively during the evolution of
an SES. Land abandonment, an endogenous deterri-
torializing process, precipitates modifications or
elimination of RA components (population decline,
agesex structure change, outmigration, weakening
of economic and social structure) that weaken their
relationships and, thus, SEFRA. Ensuing interven-
tions may restore the RA components and their rela-
tionships, thus maintaining the RA within the same
basin of attraction (same identity), or they may
introduce new components and relationships, push-
ing the SES to another basin populated by RAs with
different identity.
The emergent, contingent, and contextual nature
of the RA, its distributive and composite agency,
and the relative autonomy of its components imply
that SEFRA is an emergent trait of the RA with a
nonlinear, uncertain, and immanent causality struc-
ture. The determinants of SEFRA rest with the
inherent capacities of critical biophysical and/or
human components RA components, associated
180
thresholds that determine their capacities to be cau-
sally related, and the recurrent processes of assem-
bly. If strong territorializing processes prevail, such
as patronage and taut cultural practices, negative
feedbacks will maintain the RA components and
their relationships, thus promoting the persistence
of the current fit. If strong deterritorializing pro-
cesses prevail, such as natural or technological dis-
asters, regime changes, or socioeconomic crises,
feedbacks may modify the RA components and their
relationships and, consequently, alter SEFRA to the
better or the worse. Moreover, as the degree of
SEFRA depends on the viewpoint of actors involved
and because data and information are unequally
available, more than one causal explanation of
SEFRA may exist; redundant causality applies to
SEFRA too.
Adopting a resilience perspective, SEFRA indi-
cates the degree to which the specific style of struc-
turation of the RA promotes the preservation of SER
within a time period. Therefore, in order to assess
SEFRA, it is first necessary to assess SER and then
evaluate it against the preferred evaluation criteria
of individual actors, both within and beyond an SES.
An approach to assessing SER draws on the axio-
matic proposition of resilience thinking mentioned
before: SER is expressed through RAT which can be
approached as a synthesis of the properties and
capacities of the critical RA components in a given
period. The multidimensional, provisional assess-
ments of SER produced reflect the distributive and
composite nature of the RA. Thresholds associated
with critical components, if known or if they can be
reliably approximated, might indicate limits to the
value of SER under particular response regimes and,
thus, limits to SEFRA. Briassoulis (2015) has pro-
posed a methodology to assess SER and SEFRA
following this rationale.
The preceding discussion suggests that SEFRA is
always tied to a particular RA and it does not have
meaning outside of it. It is neither fixed nor prede-
fined; it is dynamic while its spatiotemporal stabi-
lity and durability vary with that of the RA. The
greater the value of SEFRA (more components
match harmoniously), the greater the coherence, sta-
bility, and durability of the RA. Moreover, the mul-
titude of actors involved implies that there is no
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
universally accepted value of SEFRA; there may
be, instead, only consensus values. For some actors,
the value of SER may indicate that the RA functions
satisfactorily, securing its survival and welfare,
while for others, this may not be the case. If certain
response options persist and endure while the RA
changes, this may owe to their perceived high (but
not necessarily beneficial) fit from the perspective
of those actors with the formal or informal power to
support them. Thus, the balance of power deter-
mines which view dominates and influences the
decisions taken for combating environmental degra-
dation and steering the SES in the future.
Concluding thoughts
The main argument of this article was that the expli-
cit or tacit ontological assumptions underlying stud-
ies of the effectiveness of human responses to
environmental degradation posit either seamless
wholes or networks and do not concur with real-
world circumstances. Embracing a nonreductionist
ontology, it introduced and negotiated the notions of
the RA and its socio-ecological fit. Their implica-
tions and future research needs for theorizing human
responses and their effectiveness, for developing
suitable integrated methodologies, and for guiding
sensible problem solving and decision-making on
apposite institutional design (policy and manage-
ment) are outlined below.
The greatest advantage and emancipating
power of the nonreductionist notion of assemblage
as an integrative and inclusive sociospatial construct
is its high manipulability, which helps shed
the monolithic approach to human responses to
environmental degradation and promote the
responses-in-context conception. The RA draws
attention to the dynamic, multilevel, and emergent
constitution and coevolutionary nature of open, self-
organizing, complex SESs as multiplicities defined
by assemblages, that is, provisional associations of
heterogeneous, relatively autonomous, material and
immaterial, elements variously assembled to fulfill
a purpose. Assemblage theory makes no a priori
assumptions about their final form; thus, variations
emerge from differences in the combining power of
the components, surprises arise during
Briassoulis
implementation of remedial solutions, and structur-
ing effects result from prevalent power relation-
ships. By embodying the fit for purpose sense,
the RA facilitates the comprehensive treatment of
the socio-ecological fit of responses-in-context,
that is, of SEFRA. The emphasis on the composite
and distributive identity and agency of RAs facili-
tates nondeterministic, immanent, multiple causal
explanations of environmental degradation and of
SEFRA. This acknowledges the changing and dif-
fering roles of human and nonhuman components
and their relationships, that is, of the style of struc-
turation of the RA, over time.
SEFRA is broader than the original fit between
ecosystems and institutions and subsequent versions
(Folke et al., 2007; Galaz et al., 2008) because it
treats institutions from any level as RA components
and not as external to the socioecological setting with
which the RA coevolves. It concerns the roles of and
relationships among all RA components without pri-
vileging the ecological/environmental-related ones
and environmental policies/institutions or by nar-
rowly focusing on selected socioeconomic issues
(e.g. livelihoods). SEFRA is emergent, distributive,
and composite, with variable spatiotemporal stability
and durability. It is specific to a particular RA
because actors differ in their knowledge, understand-
ing, and perception of environmental degradation,
and because their values, priorities, and roles within
the RA, as well as their intent and power to act and
assess it, also differ. Lasting RAs and human
responses persist because powerful and privileged
actors find them highly fit for their purposes.
Future research on theorizing RAs and SEFRA may
move in several directions. A comprehensive compar-
ison among the whole, network and assemblage ontol-
ogies will help ascertain the suitability of the RA for
conceptualizing and analyzing responses-in-context.
The articulation of micro- and macro-theories from the
natural and the social sciences will elucidate the style
of structuration, the mechanisms of RA emergence,
and other RA traits in diverse empirical settings. The
relationship of the RA to modes of production is par-
ticularly worth exploring (Chari, 2009).
The most significant methodological implication
of the RA is that it constitutes the meaningful object
of reference and basis for synthesizing various
181
approaches to the study of the effectiveness of
human responses. An assemblage-based analysis
organizes the thick description and analysis of
human responses in a focal SES and the associated
sociospatial hierarchy over a study period around
the following issues: (a) characteristic RAs formed
(responses-in-context); (b) style of structuration of
the RAscomponents, processes of assembly, and
mechanisms of emergence; (c) roles of and relation-
ships among components; (d) possibility space,
attractors and basins of attraction, and thresholds
of critical components; (e) place of RAs within
basins and apposite contingencies; (f) properties,
capacities, and tendencies of the RA(s); (g) synth-
esis of properties to assess SER; and (h) actor-
specific criteria to evaluate SER and derive SEFRA.
An assemblage-based analysis supports the explana-
tion of the effectiveness of human responses as
rarely owing to a single component but emerging
from contingent causal associations among RA
components, constrained by their capacities and
limited by thresholds of critical components.
Future research is called for to elaborate
integrated assessment methodologies for an
assemblage-based analysis of the effectiveness of
human responses that accommodate different scien-
tific and actor perspectives and handle present and
future uncertainty to support decision- and policy
making. This necessitates the synthesis of current
diagnostic approaches and types of reasoning, a
combination of quantitative and qualitative tech-
niques, and the design of innovative tools to obtain
dynamic representations of RAs, among many oth-
ers (Briassoulis, 2015; DeLanda, 2002, 2006a,
2011; Epstein and Vogt, 2011; Ostrom 2007, Plum-
mer and Armitage, 2007; Young, 2008b).
An assemblage-based approach introduces an
outlook to environmental problem-solving,
decision-making, and policy guidance that diverges
from reductionist, positivist approaches assuming
wholes or constructivist approaches assuming net-
works. The former presumes that SESs are tightly
connected, pregiven, mechanistic wholes where
proper external interventions, which often empha-
size certain aspects of an SES, will effectively com-
bat environmental degradation. The latter, although
acknowledging the open and fluid nature of SESs,
182
deny the relative autonomy and downplay the
agency of individual components that, through
their presence or absence, may prove critical deter-
minants of effective interventions. Within an RA
approach, decision-making is immanent to the RA
because formal and informal institutions and the
governance structure are RA components.
Pertinent policy implications are provisionally
summarized below.
The effectiveness of any proposed intervention
on RA components and/or their relationships is
uncertain because they are relatively autonomous
and their capacities are not completely known a
priori; they are revealed from their contingent and
contextual interactions with other components.
Moreover, the agency of the RA may block reme-
dial efforts if they diverge from current practices
as exemplified by the difficulties of introducing
environmental management innovations in sev-
eral settings.
The dynamic, distributive, and composite nature
of RAs suggests that there is no ideal starting point
for designing effective or optimal human responses
or optimal RAs (ORAs). Interventions targeting one
component (e.g. soil or water) may or may not yield
desirable outcomes because changes in other com-
ponents and their interactions, as well as influences
from other levels during implementation and unpre-
dictable contingencies, condition their effects.
Interventions concerning other goals may uninten-
tionally help combat environmental degradation.
Socioecologically fit human responses can be
achieved not from interventions on environmental
resources through environmental institutions but
also, and perhaps more often, from interventions
on any RA component and/or process of assembly
that modify either the geometry of effective basins
of attraction and/or the place of an SES within them.
An assemblage-based approach to environmental
decision-making thus abandons the idea of best
practices, opting instead for the design of tempo-
rary, consensus ORAs; that is, provisional associa-
tions among existing, modified, and proposed
components (e.g. new response options) of an SES
that a majority of actors consider fit to effectively
preserve SER under alternative futures. Theoreti-
cally, ideal best practices corresponding to the
Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2)
diagram of the RA may exist, but the dynamics of
SESs and the constant processes of assembly may
hinder their ex ante identification and materializa-
tion. An assemblage-based approach offers the
appropriate ontological framing of adaptive man-
agement, whether de jure, planned and institutiona-
lized, or de facto, informally practiced, as a
reasonable environmental management strategy
(Berkes and Folke, 2000; Berkes et al., 2003).
Assemblage-based adaptive management directs
attention to the analysis of past and current RAs in
an SES aiming to foster, through continuous experi-
mentation, the emergence of ORAs under uncertain
futures. The latter may be simple modifications of
current RAs to better fit changing conditions (adap-
tation) or more thorough transformations, bringing
the SES to basins of attraction populated by differ-
ent RAs. Elaborating the details of assemblage-
based adaptive management is an important future
research direction.
Finally, empirical applications of the
assemblage-based approach to diverse affected
regions are indispensable for developing and testing
theoretical propositions, assessing methodologies
and techniques, determining the role of decisions
and policies in the formation of both temporary and
lasting RAs and, eventually, evaluating the useful-
ness of the approach as an environmental govern-
ance support framework. Extending its application
to other sociospatial phenomena will test its broader
utility for spatial analysis and decision support.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank assistant professor Vassilis
Detsis, Harokopion University, Athens, Greece, for his
valuable comments on drafts of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article: This work was supported by the project LED-
DRA funded by the Environment Programme, Management
Briassoulis
of Natural Resources, DG Research and Innovation under
grant 243857 (1 April 201031 March 2014).
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