New ontologies for sustainability? Toward making ecology explicitly political

Background/Question/Methods This paper questions two of the most important boundary assumptions under which most academics continue to operate even as we increasingly hear, and respond to, calls for inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinarity in the face of socio-environmental crises. In most disciplines, "the human" remains ontologically separate from "the natural." Because of this, most interdisciplinary studies describe and analyze "interactions" or "connections" or "coupling" between what are assumed to be separate systems that require different forms of understanding and analysis. Another equally important ontological divide for most academics is the dichotomy between "objectivity/subjectivity" or, more broadly, "apolitical/political." This paper examines a number of recent attempts at overcoming these ontological divides, including social constructivism, nature-society hybrids as espoused through actor network theory, anti-essentialist or "post-natural" political ecology, and insights from the application of ideas from non-equilibrium ecology to conservation and development programs. I aim to start a conversation among ecologists and agroecologists about these concepts that are part of the subfield of political ecology — one located largely in the borderlands between geography, anthropology, sociology, and environmental sciences. Results/Conclusions Through examining common conceptualizations of these important ontological domains (nature/society, subjective/objective), the a priori boundaries typically drawn between them, and alternative conceptualizations, I aim to expose what is at stake in terms of epistemology and praxis if these boundaries remain as currently established. I argue that the stakes are very high. They involve the continuation of (1) the view of capitalism as a "natural" and preferred form of socio-environmental metabolism and (2) scholars' holding back from societal engagement because it goes against common views of scientific objectivity, which itself is arguably a political decision that serves to reinforce the status quo. The conclusion argues that reflecting on, acknowledging, and discussing normative commitments with decision-makers and the public must become part of the practice of science that claims to represents and speak for nature and socio-nature(s).