Making differences legible: Incommensurability as a vehicle for sustainable landscape management

Landscape management involves tackling both systemic and social complexity: the former due to multiple interacting entities, latter incommensurable knowledge value systems of stakeholders. Current practice in landscape makes wide use participatory methods, which helps increase breadth our understanding sustainability problems, e.g. biodiversity loss, agricultural pest damages or water penury. However, this also often offers a flat, harmonized picture landscape, precludes observing ambiguities out-of-the-box arguments ideas for overcoming problems. In article, we analyzed two research settings that tended surface formalize incommensurability between stakeholders regarding sustainable landscapes – one focused on quantitative management, other agroecological control. The objective was investigate if extent these ‘opening-up’ exercises, based deliberative rationale, were beneficial sustainability. results indicated cases, participants strove position their values relative others: way, they delineated negotiation learning space invest in, enhanced quality arguments, allowing new insights focus issues. These findings offer an operational counterpoint prevalence ‘closing-down’ approaches approaches. general context ecological crisis, examples promote methodological options disruptive narratives, as well tools allow reflexive scientific knowledge, models indicators traditionally used appraisals, without discarding them.