Explaining change and stability in social-ecological transformations from a morphogenetic approach

Studies on social-ecological transformations have explained change and no-change at systemic level through and overlooked the contribution of agents that keep the system from changing and how their actions respond to their position, which constitutes a critical analytical gap due to the limited success of societies at transforming social-ecological systems. However, when it comes to analysing underlying dynamics, frameworks focus on key agents of change, such as institutional entrepreneurs. This approach overlooks the contribution of agents that keep the system from changing, which constitutes a critical analytical gap due to the limited success of societies at transforming social-ecological systems. We advance an analytical strategy that tackles this gap by explicitly accounting for both causes of change and no-change. This view links agent’s motivations and courses of action to their positionality. We draw from social realism’s morphogenetic approach to analytically distinguish between material and ideational drivers of action, identify situations that bring them about, and account for their relations. To operationalize this view, we trace actors’ interaction and how they lead to outcomes. We rely on the social-ecological action situations framework. This combined approach renders explicit: a) the constitution of material interests by both ecosystemic processes and social structures; b) the relations of compatibility/incompatibility between groups’ material interest; and c) the role of social-ecological interaction in shaping discursive relations of compatibility/incompatibility among actor groups. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach by applying it to the well-documented case of governance transformation of Chilean small-scale fisheries