Ontological differences and the pursuit of planetary well-being

Abstract

This chapter emphasizes the importance of ontological dialogue and methodological choices to the conceptual development and practical enactment of planetary well-being. Starting from the premise that cultural practices, including scientific concepts and methods, shape realities, the chapter suggests approaching nature and culture as entangled with each other. From this perspective, this chapter deals with divergent biocultural realities rather than a single, universal Nature viewed from multiple cultural perspectives. Biocultural realities differ in terms of how well they enable more-than-human communities to regenerate themselves. The chapter proposes anthropologist Anna Tsing’s conceptual pair of multispecies resurgence and Anthropocene proliferation for making sense of how world-making practices can either cultivate or disrupt regenerative processes central to planetary well-being. The chapter also encourages ontological dialogue between biocultural realities to promote and achieve planetary well-being. Tsing’s assemblage approach is suggested as a potential tool for transdisciplinary and multi-ontological co-researching of more-than-human histories of landscapes and communities. The approach allows different ontologies and conceptualizations of well-being to be combined, without forcing them into a unified framework.