Conceptualizing the Heterogeneity, Embeddedness, and Ongoing Restructuring That Make Ecological Complexity ‘Unruly’

Abstract

My thesis is that, although ecologists have not named the concept as such, they are always dealing with unruly complexity, that is, with ongoing change in the structure of situations that have built up over time from heterogeneous components and are embedded or situated within wider dynamics. Ecology tends to suppress such complexity by mimicking the physical sciences in constructing – materially and conceptually – well-bounded systems, which have clearly defined boundaries, coherent internal dynamics, and simply mediated relations with their external context. Ecologists can envisage themselves positioned outside the systems and seek generalizations and principles that afford a natural or economical reduction of complexity. If researchers want, in contrast, to discipline unruly complexity without suppressing it, they need to recognize that control and generalization are difficult and no privileged standpoint exists; that ongoing assessment is needed, and this requires engagement in the changing situations. The inner structure of ecology rests, therefore, on the tension between unruliness and attempts to discipline it.