ABSTRACT
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) frameworks have gained popularity for studying the cultural dynamics within social-ecological systems and how to account for culture within management and stewardship action. However, CES frameworks and research often fail to explicitly account for issues surrounding politics and power dynamics, and there is a lack of systematic guidance for translating results into specific and concrete intervention recommendations. In this chapter, we use the analogy of fibers, cordage, and net to illustrate how four complementary frameworks – biocultural studies, human well-being, relational values, and CES – can be leveraged to more comprehensively study cultural dynamics within social-ecological systems and yield more intentional and effective intervention recommendations. Community-oriented interdisciplinary applied cultural research can help ground these analyses in the histories and politics of place, provide insight into the causal links between various social-ecological factors that shape and are shaped by cultural dynamics, and ultimately aid in crafting more effective management and stewardship recommendations that address environmental injustices. By expanding and refining how CES frameworks are utilized, applied cultural research can be a means for collectively designing, crafting, and assessing the nets that will carry our communities and ecologies into more abundant, just, and resilient futures.
