The semiotic nature of power in social-ecological systems

Anderies (2015); Anderies et al. (2016), informed by Ostrom (2005), aim to employ robust

feedback control models of social-ecological systems (SESs), to inform policy and the

design of institutions guiding resilient resource use. Cote and Nightingale (2012) note that

the main assumptions of resilience research downplay culture and social power. Addressing

the epistemic gap between positivism and interpretation (Rosenberg 2016), this dissertation

argues that power and culture indeed are of primary interest in SES research.

Human use of symbols is seen as an evolved semiotic capacity. First, representation is

argued to arise as matter achieves semiotic closure (Pattee 1969; Rocha 2001) at the onset

of natural selection. Guided by models by Kauffman (1993), the evolution of a symbolic

code in genes is examined, and thereon the origin of representations other than genetic

in evolutionary transitions (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995; Beach 2003). Human

symbolic interaction is proposed as one that can support its own evolutionary dynamics.

The model offered for wider dynamics in society are “flywheels,” mutually reinforcing

networks of relations. They arise as interactions in a domain of social activity intensify, e.g.

due to interplay of infrastructures, mediating built, social, and ecological affordances (An-

deries et al. 2016). Flywheels manifest as entities facilitated by the simplified interactions

(e.g. organizations) and as cycles maintaining the infrastructures (e.g. supply chains). They

manifest internal specialization as well as distributed intention, and so can favor certain

groups’ interests, and reinforce cultural blind spots to social exclusion (Mills 2007).

The perspective is applied to research of resilience in SESs, considering flywheels a

semiotic extension of feedback control. Closer attention to representations of potentially

excluded groups is justified on epistemic in addition to ethical grounds, as patterns in cul-

tural text and social relations reflect the functioning of wider social processes. Participatory

methods are suggested to aid in building capacity for institutional learning.