Power,cooptation,and the multiplicity of response assemblages

Abstract

This commentary provides an empirical example that supports Briassoulis’s ‘response assemblage’ (RA) conceptualization but also suggests an extension of this framework. It uses an example of different approaches to protecting New Caledonia’s coral reefs—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage List and Rhéébù Nùù, an indigenous group targeting a multinational mining and refinery project—to demonstrate that RAs, as responses to specific environmental threats, may be not only parts of multiplicities (complex socioecological systems) but multiple themselves. Further, it shows that distinct RAs may compete and even come into conflict. Moreover, this example demonstrates the crucial role of power—or perceptions of power—in determining the outcomes of RAs, and in particular, of the interactions of multiple RAs.