Fishing for Relations: Rethinking Social-Ecological Systems Through Process-Relational Modelling

How can we better understand the intricate web of relationships that bind people, nature, and the institutions that govern them—particularly in complex systems such as small-scale fisheries? A recent study by Schlüter et al. (2025) offers an innovative perspective: rather than viewing the world as composed of fixed entities like “humans” or “fish,” it proposes modeling these systems as evolving networks of relationships and interactions that continuously shape one another.