ABSTRACT
The social science ontology of environment is one point of incision into the heart of theorising society and environment relations. Ontology refers to the branch of metaphysics concerned with the study and description of being, the general conditions of existence or the substance of reality. The tendency among social scientists to be concerned with ontology merely because it establishes disciplinary objects, relations or concepts has, in recent years, been complemented by an ontological ‘turn’ that entails incisive probing of everyday and disciplinary assumptions (Escobar 2010; Gregory et al. 2009). Such a project has been advanced by critical scholars concerned with environment, and especially those simultaneously burdened and ardent to illustrate the deceptions of dualistic takes on reality. On the one hand, non-dualistic work is reactionary; it opens crucial space for social theory to dissent from excesses of determinism, reductionism, quantification and metanarratives. On the other, there are inventive and inter-disciplinary intentions at play that articulate environmental realities of inclusion, responsibility and emergence.
