Contribution short abstract

This paper turns polycrisis against itself, drawing on its internal tensions to expose conceptual limits and to explore how ambivalence can sharpen critique and open alternative ways of sensing and narrating systemic breakdown.

Contribution long abstract

This paper examines the polycrisis not as a stable analytical category, but as an ambivalent epistemic device that reveals as much about contemporary modes of knowing as about the “crises” it names. Drawing on Morin and Latour’s critique of the modern nature–society divide, I argue that the circulation of polycrisis operates across three interdependent registers.

First, in mainstream commentary—from Tooze to the World Economic Forum—polycrisis appears as a catch-all label for the simultaneous escalation of environmental, geopolitical, financial, and social disturbances. This reading simply multiplies crises, producing aggregation rather than explanation.

Second, read through Arrighi’s notion of systemic chaos, the term points to the erosion of global organisational capacities, the fragmentation of hegemonic direction, and the intensification of contradictions produced through the long co-production of nature and capital. This structural reading aligns with political ecology by foregrounding how crises are mutually generative across accumulation and social reproduction.

Third, following Morin, polycrisis names both the inter-solidarity of multiple “vital problems” and the crisis of the epistemological frameworks through which we apprehend them. It exposes the limits of a Western paradigm built on disjunction and reduction, ill-equipped to grasp inter-retro-actions and the relational texture of socio-ecological worlds.

Approaching polycrisis ambivalently means refusing both alarmist affirmation and technocratic dismissal. Ambivalence does not weaken critique; it sharpens it by revealing the conceptual instability, political risks, and seductions that allow polycrisis to circulate as a fashionable yet under-theorised concept, and by opening space to rethink how political ecology narrates systemic breakdown without deterministic frames.

Contribution short abstract

If we take the functional differentiation of society seriously, then no unified affective orientation can be socially communicated. Attempts to reorient society around ecological concerns requires taking ambivalence as a structural condition of communicating across different orientations seriously.

Contribution long abstract

Society, we could say, has a deeply ambivalent relationship to its ecological environment. Political ecologists often seek to resolve this ambivalence through critique—affirming hope, diagnosing failure, or calling for transformation. But if we are to “think like a system,” or “see like a system” metaphorically, then ambivalence may be where we must begin.

Systems theory, especially Luhmann’s second-order variant, invites us to observe how meaning is produced through recursive operations that do not resolve contradictions but organise them. There is usually more than one way of making sense of, let alone deciding about, a situation (Harste, 2021). There is no ultimate meaning or shared normative orientation that can unite a functionally differentiated society. To presume otherwise is to invoke political theology, not political ecology.

This paper contributes to efforts to give systems theory “a critical edge” (Jessop, 2008; Moeller, 2012; Overwijk, 2025) by asking: what happens if we orient critique not around a unified “we,” but around operationally closed systems whose self-referential logics continually undermine ecological viability? If such systems are structurally inoculated against affective and moral critique, how does this reshape what counts as ‘political communication’?

Ambivalence in a systems-view becomes more than a mood: it is a socio-structural condition of orientation. Thinking ambivalently with systems might allow political ecology to inhabit its own limits, and, in doing so, may just thicken its capacities for meaningful intervention.

Contribution short abstract

Based on ethnographic engagement with democratic innovations in Danish land-use transformations, we argue democracy is a complex system where each new component introduces uncertainty and ambivalence, shifting focus from design principles to practices of designing democratic innovations.

Contribution long abstract

Democratic innovations, designed to deepen citizen participation, increasingly operate within political ecologies where decisions about land, resources, and futures are entangled with multispecies and intergenerational justice. The literature on democratic innovations seems to assume that democracy can be approached as a complicated system where a few essential components classify whether a democracy functions. We argue instead that democracy is more like a complex system, where each new component introduces a level of uncertainty, while always displacing the system for better or worse pushing our attention towards the practices of designing democratic innovations, rather than design principles of democratic innovations. This perspective foregrounds ambivalence as a condition of democratic practice, shifting attention from principles to practices. Drawing on ethnographic engagement with democratic innovations for land-use transformations in Denmark, we trace how these processes negotiate tensions between democratic engagement and climate governance. We treat ambivalence as a condition for forming attachments and attunements, cultivating ecological sensibilities vital to intergenerational and more-than-human futures. Finally, we explore lingering as a methodological practice for working with ambivalence without forcing resolution, thickening democracy in and for political ecology.

Contribution short abstract

Analizamos cómo emergen las animalidades (y humanidades) en los espacios, vínculos y afectos entre humanos y no humanos en el Antropoceno. A partir del jabalí en Uruguay identificamos tres figuras (enemigo, rival y mascota) que muestran cómo se moldean animalidades ambivalentes y su complejidad.

Contribution long abstract

Los matreros, fugitivos rurales del Uruguay del siglo XIX que desafiaron la ley y la propiedad pero también despertaban simpatías y afectos, ofrecen una figura sugestiva para pensar las relaciones contemporáneas con el jabalí (Sus scrofa). Introducido con fines cinegéticos en 1929, el jabalí se expandió rápidamente por Uruguay y hoy acumula etiquetas como plaga nacional o Especie Exótica Invasora (EEI); pero también es una pieza codiciada de caza e incluso, a veces, una mascota querida en fincas rurales.

Este estudio indaga cómo emergen las animalidades en los espacios, vínculos y afectos entre humanos y no humanos en el Antropoceno. A partir de entrevistas y observación con actores vinculados al jabalí, junto con el análisis de normativa, prensa y literatura, identificamos tres configuraciones (enemigo, rival y mascota) que revelan la inestabilidad de su estatus. La ambivalencia aparece como un modo de atención que permite rastrear cómo afectos, prácticas, intereses productivos, discursos de conservación o imaginarios estéticos modelan esas animalidades, políticas y vínculos con otros no humanos.

Sostenemos que la animalidad no es un atributo fijo, sino una cualidad situada y negociada. Abordar estas configuraciones desde la ambivalencia permite problematizar categorías naturalizadas como plaga, EEI o mascota y mostrar cómo los mismos cuerpos pueden devenir monstruos, bestias o seres queridos.

Seguir los rastros del jabalí en Uruguay, a través de la figura del matrero, ofrece una lente para pensar ecologías políticas ambivalentes y la complejidad de afectos, tensiones y decisiones que configuran relaciones de vida y muerte en el Antropoceno.

Contribution short abstract

Drawing on leftover field materials (photos, audio, diary notes), I explore ambivalence in researching Addis Ababa’s vegetable food system. The presentation highlights messy, situated, and feminist ways of knowing that reveal the city’s unfolding urban political ecologies.

Contribution long abstract

Throughout a research project, particularly toward its anticipated “finish line,” we often aim to produce a clear argument supported by orderly, interpretable data. Yet in contexts of high complexity, where layered politics, intersecting power imbalances, and diverse knowledges converge, such clarity is difficult to achieve without sidelining unresolved, plural, and contradictory insights. I see ambivalence as one such underacknowledged dimensions: Reflecting upon my doctoral research on the urban political ecologies of Addis Ababa’s informally shaped vegetable food system, ambivalence was an omnipresent methodological, empirical, and personal condition. Four years of fieldwork unfolded amid shifting access to sites, intercultural and linguistic hurdles, and evolving ethical boundaries. My transition into motherhood further introduced new layers of vulnerability, affective negotiation, and reorientation of research priorities. Empirically, ambivalence saturated the field: women’s labour appeared simultaneously exploitative and empowering; informal infrastructures offered both autonomy and instability; and urban transformations opened opportunities even as they marginalised low-income actors.The panel spoke to me immediately, as I have been searching for a place to explore these unresolved and complicated accounts. For this presentation, I want to explore “left-over data”, including photographs, audio fragments, personal notes, and field diary entries, to work through the ambivalences that shaped my research and explore how they might thicken our understandings of (urban) political ecologies. I also see the panel’s theme as connected to conceptual entries shaping my dissertation, including Southern and feminist urban theory, Simone’s improvisational urbanism, and calls for “otherwise” and “dirty” research that foreground messy and ambivalent forms of knowing.