A holon approach to agroecology1...of boundary. The most powerful and least unpre-dictable changes...

A holon approach to agroecology1

William L. Bland1� and Michael M. Bell2

1Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA; and 2Department of RuralSociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Systems thinking contributes to envisioning agricultural sustainability. However, it faces two dilemmas,recently highlighted by complexity theory: the problems of boundary and change. We propose thatinterpreting Koestler’s holon as an intentional entity embedded in an ecology of contexts provides anontological construct which addresses both of these issues. The holon is in some ways a whole andin other ways a part, and to see it simultaneously as both we suggest an epistemological tool that weterm flickering. In our interpretation a holon is bounded by its intentionality to persist, and theimperative to do so in multiple, incommensurable, and ever-evolving contexts motivates – indeed,makes both possible and inevitable – change. Farms are compelling examples of holons, as theirhumans plan and act to maintain them as a source of livelihood, necessarily in contexts as diverseand shifting as climate, life histories, trade rules, subsidies, personal spirituality and publicperceptions of agricultural practices.

Keywords: systems, complexity, theory, agriculture, sociology, human-environment systems,agroecology, holon

Like all major human endeavours (our lists wouldsurely overlap), agriculture has pervasive anddeep connections with diverse issues. In the caseof agriculture, the prosperity of the vast majorityof species, myriad human cultures and our ownspiritual sensitivities are all shaped by, and inturn shape, these connections, these involvements.Agriculture is a huge, and hugely important, under-taking, and its students are at long last finallycoming to appreciate this involved hugeness. Thisis a great step forward from the many decades ofunderstanding it more as an ensemble of discretebits – a large ensemble of bits, to be sure, andone that is articulated here and there, but still asa kind of machine, fundamentally separable partfrom part, and as well from the world at large:rigid, linear, detachable and controllable. We are,

along the way, learning to welcome the perspec-tives and contributions of a great many entrypoints for the study of agriculture, from soilscience to social science, from agronomy tozoology.

The turn to systems thinking has been decisive.Agricultural theorists embraced systems thinking asa powerful and essential epistemological tool. Earlyarticulations of the interconnectedness of the bio-physical and social, for example Bawden and Ison(1992), Conway (1987), Pearson and Ison (1987),looked to systems thinking to structure furtherresearch on farming systems in developed settingstoward efficiency, and in more resource-poor set-tings to make more effective interventions leadingto greater productivity for vulnerable farmers andpopulations. Thirty years later, systems thinkingserves as a fundamental tool in the task of transform-ing agriculture towards a ‘sustainable’ future�Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY 5(4) 2007, Pages 280–294

# 2007 Earthscan www.earthscanjournals.com

(e.g. Gliessman, 2004). It has now become a matterof our intellectual reflexes to speak of agriculturalsystems, to consider the ecological context of agricul-ture, to invite participation from stakeholders intoagricultural decision-making, and to embrace thecomplexity of doing all of these. We are seekinginterconnections, we are finding them, and we aredoing better at acting on them.

All this is good news, but there remain a numberof places for intellectual growth in this moreinvolved understanding of agriculture, particularlywith regard to systems thinking. As valuable as ithas been for conceptualizing agriculture’scomplex involvements, there are limitations inwhat systems thinking allows us to describe anddiscuss. Our principal concern is that the languageof systems encourages an over-connected under-standing of the world – an understanding thatleads to two dilemmas currently besetting systemsthinking: the problems of boundary and of change.

In the under-connected view of agriculture – as acollection of tools and techniques to be steadilyimproved – that formerly held the intellectualfield, boundaries were precise and secure, ifunrealistic. But if as the systems view would haveus see it – that all is connected – how do wedraw boundaries by which we might understandthe world, as William James phrased it, as anythingother than a blooming, buzzing confusion? Whereare the surfaces and breakpoints of significance?Where does, for example, a farm begin and end?At the property boundary? At the edge of thewatershed and the wildlife migration corridor? Atthe consumer’s dinner plate? Indeed, if everythingis connected, can there be a surface or breakpointthat bounds any thing? All is one, and the analystis immobilized in finding an intelligent way todescribe, research, and account for particular por-tions of the system. Yet in order to proceed thedomain of the analysis must somehow be limitedor bounded, explicitly or otherwise. This is an epis-temological challenge that we term the subjectivityproblem of system boundary. There is an inevitablesubjectivity in defining the system to be studied,that is, another analyst might well draw the bound-aries demarcating the system of interest differently.

An equally vexing challenge is deciding on whichof the many stories that might be told about thesystem are we trying to tell – what we term the nar-rative problem. This arises because the same set of

observations are part of very different stories, forexample Bill Cronon’s (1992) comparison ofalternative tellings of the meaning of whitemigration into the US Great Plains reveals it to beinterpretable as destruction of peoples and nature,or the triumph of a people over nature. The ‘soft-systems’ methodology of Checkland (e.g. Check-land & Scholes, 1999) confronts directly the narra-tive challenge in the boundary problem. Theyargued that systems thinking always in part reflectsthe priorities of the systems thinker, and has to beunderstood as caught up in human institutionsand politics, with all their implications for ideologyand social power. Checkland (Checkland & Scholes,1999; 7) identified diverse narratives connected tothe program to build the Concorde supersonic airli-ner beyond fabricating a machine: an important col-laboration between the British government and thecountry’s leading aircraft manufacturer, a projectto stimulate European engineering, and an exercisein British collaboration with European partners.

Thus the narrative problem is about choosingwhich story is being told about a set of events,because there are always multiple possible mean-ings to any situation. Selecting a story forces theanalyst to seek an ontology, that is, to makedecisions about what entities and relationships areimportant and must be emphasized, in order totell this story. While the subjectivity issue is an epis-temological question, the narrative issue is onto-logical. Unfortunately, this means that systemsthinking must represent only a partial view, intwo senses of the word: limited and, in the end, pol-itical. The question at hand is limited by the (epis-temologically essential) boundaries that, alas,allow us to address only part of the larger web ofconnections, and it is made political, that is, amatter for contention, by the ontological choiceof which questions to ask and which to not ask.

An early exposition of systems thinking in agri-culture provides an opportunity to reiterate thesubjective and narrative boundary problems. InSpedding’s (1988) An Introduction to AgriculturalSystems, he illustrates the subjective boundaryproblem by considering the mass and energyexchanges of a chicken, and specifically the impli-cations of confining said chicken in a box. Onceso confined, the boundary of any systems analysisabout the chicken’s physiology probably mustexpand to include the box and perhaps the box’s


A HOLON APPROACH TO AGROECOLOGY 281

environment. But maybe not, depending on theparticular question and assumptions about whataspects of the chicken will change as a result ofbeing in the box. This is the subjective boundaryproblem: where can we validly draw the outerboundary of our system? Few situations are any-where near as simple as this example. Speddingdid not address the narrative boundary problem,however. Here we imagine the other stories inwhich the chicken plays a role. Does placing itin a box raise ethical issues about using animalsin research? Was the farmer who raised thechicken rewarded appropriately? Did relatedfarming activities degrade soil and water resources?Will the chicken become part of a nutritious meal,or actually harm the health of the eater?

The boundary problems of systems thinkinghave long been recognized (e.g. Churchman,1979). Theorists continue to the present toadvance procedures for addressing the problemsin an orderly and transparent way. Midgly(2000), for example, cites four earlier examples ofefforts to overcome inevitable and confoundingboundaries in systems analysis, and proposes yetanother. There is likely no escaping the dangersof the inevitable boundaries in systems thinking,only ways of being aware of their possible impli-cations in applications of this epistemology – asUlrich (1993) points out, ‘The “right” boundaryjudgments depend on the subjective interests,values, and knowledge of those who judge. . .[and] will tend to be disputed.’

Change is also difficult to discuss within systemsthinking and its view of a connected-up world.Indeed, most systems accounts do not discusschange, but rather present a boxes-and-arrowssnapshot, with perhaps a tip of the hat to‘dynamic equilibrium’. But even dynamicequilibrium is a kind of change without change inthat, under the presumption of connectedness,everything is accounted for and understood. It ispredicted change, and thus in a deeper sense isnot change at all. As well, there is a presumptionthat the connectedness of things puts them at ‘equi-librium’, a kind of constantly readjusting balancingact in the involved hugeness of it all. But is theworld everywhere balanced out, or even seekingbalance? Are there no disjunctures, conflicts andcontradictions? Does it really function as somegreat whole? Systems thinking gives us little

means of conceiving any incompleteness of involve-ment, any options for the emergence of new entitiesand connections. Yet that we should be preparedfor infinite, unimaginable possibilities is surely afundamental lesson of Darwinian evolution. Waysto talk about these infinite possibilities are essentialto the possibilism and unpredictability of a deepersense of the meaning of change.

Further a system model is inevitably obsolete.This out-of-dateness arises because it can only beconstructed from observations made over somespan of time. Our presumption of change meansthat at least theoretically the relevant entitiesare in flux – new types appearing, new relation-ships replacing obsolete ones, all the while as theobserver gains and loses sensitivities. In the snap-shot portrayal there is an inescapable assumptionof a ‘system’ that it is just that: an identifiablething, and not some other identifiable thing, staticand worked out, staying in equilibrium, despitedynamism.

The under-connected view of agriculture had acomfortable theory of levers-and-knobs changethat gave us a pleasant feeling of control over a sim-plified world. We rightly reject that linear andmechanical view today, but systems thinking doesnot reject the pleasant feeling of control overchange. On the contrary, systems thinking typicallypresents itself as a better source of control, one thattakes into account the real connectedness of life.But in continuing this mode of control, it has stillfound little desire for accommodating the plainreality of unpredictability (Bell, forthcoming). Inthis way, the problem of narrative also extends tothe problem of change. In order to tell a story ofcontrol, systems thinking has distanced itself fromhighlighting the incompleteness, disjunctures andpossibilism that undermine such a story.

A sense of control is supported by a feeling ofstability in the boundaries we draw. A rich senseof change brings us back to the narrative challengeof boundary. The most powerful and least unpre-dictable changes are ontological: when the import-ant entities and their connections seem to havesomehow shifted. The result, as we will describe,is a tendency of systems thinking to present anoverly tidy view of agriculture, in which the verycollection of parts that are relevant, and the bound-aries we draw through them, are too precise, toostable, and too worked out. Further, we may see


282 W.L. BLAND AND M.M. BELL

the connections within as stronger and more rigidthan they really are, causing us to fail to imaginemyriad alternative behaviors. Doubts have beengrowing about the advisability and feasibility ofsystem theory’s pleasantness (e.g. Allen et al.,2001; Checkland & Scholes, 1999; Rosen, 1991,2000; Vayda, 1986). The term ‘complexitytheory’ is perhaps the best overall summary ofwhat these authors have tried to highlight for us,in their various ways.

We describe here a path that leads on and outfrom the insights of complexity, and especiallyfrom a reframing of Koestler’s (1967) idea of theholon. We adopt the holon as a key ontologicaltype, and an analytic method that we term flicker-ing as an essential epistemological tool. We willdescribe how the holon enables discussion ofboundary and change within a world of involve-ment a la systems, while flickering gives us a flex-ible vision of boundaries that remain open toevolution and unconnectedness.

We apply the notions of holon and flickering toagroecology, a word we greatly admire becauseits etymology asks us to consider the issues of agri-culture’s connections. A scholar-student mayapproach agriculture with little more than a sensethat it is a rich and fundamentally importantcomplex of activity, worthy of study, or with a par-ticular problem in mind, say, protein malnutritionin Sub-Saharan Africa, or the relatively high costof growing apples in Wisconsin. With either sucha general or specific concern in mind, the agro-ecological commitment, in our understanding ofit, is to seek to transcend any one particular entrypoint into the agricultural debate. But to seeksuch a transcendence should not be to presumeentry points do not or should not exist. If all theworld is connected, then there are no connectionsto make, nothing to transcend, nothing to learn.Thus, we offer the holon approach not as a finalanswer, but as a way for the agroecologicallyconcerned to at least agree on a radio frequencyon which they might communicate with oneanother as they pursue their journeys throughcomplex agricultural questions.

The holon approach, as will become clear, takesas one of its points of departure that agriculture is,most fundamentally, humans planning and actingto cultivate a livelihood through the phenomenaof plant and animal increase. Further, these

planning humans seek configurations of theirendeavours that will allow them to sustain theiragricultural ambitions. It is, we believe, importantto start out with a reverence for this planning.

Systems thinking and the problem ofover-connectedness

‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we findit hitched to everything else in the Universe’, wroteJohn Muir (1911), a much-cited line, and justly so.Its imagery aptly captures the anti-reductioniststance that has long been a part of the ecologicalmind, and that has always characterized systemsthinking. This is often a good emphasis to have.Systems thinking provides a language and habitsof the mind that repeatedly alert us to the ideathat ‘you can’t do just one thing’ (variouslyascribed to Leopold, Bateson, Ehrlich, Campbelland no doubt others). There are typically numerousimplications of an action, some of them distantin time and space, and the under-connected visionof reductionism encouraged us to overlookthese, at least at first, often to our eventualdismay. As we have come to rue the stubbing ofour toes, we have come to embrace theword system.

These are old intellectual troubles, however.Although it has come to seem a relatively newconcept, with the continuing flurry of academicwriting on it since the 1950s, the word system actu-ally dates back to the ancient Greeks. It was theywho combined the root syn, meaning ‘connect’ or‘combine’, with histanai, meaning to ‘set up’ or‘establish’, into sustema, in order to describe an‘organized whole’ (Onions, 1955 (1933)). TheRomans felt they needed to be reminded of theseinsights too and they took sustema almost directlyinto Latin, calling it systema.

But there are perils as well in carrying this senseof an organized whole too far. These too are perilsthat have long troubled us. Aristotle, for example,railed at the ‘monism’ he found in the thought ofhis teacher, Plato, who offered a united view ofthe world in which ‘the Good’ created all thingsand all things were a manifestation of ‘the Good’.With such a perspective, Aristotle (1987) retortedin the Physics (185b: 15–25), all things ‘will bethe same, and the thesis under discussion will no



longer be that all things are one, but that they arenothing at all’.

Systems thinking, in its currently commonmodes, courts these Platonic troubles. Let us take,for example, a recent effort to present an overviewof the agricultural endeavour from a systems pointof view, by the noted agroecologist, Steven Gliess-man. We reproduce in Figure 1 the visual represen-tation that Gliessman gives of his systems analysis,what he terms the ‘functional and structural com-ponents of an ecosystem converted to a sustainableagroecosystem’ (Gliessman, 2004: 21). Let usimmediately emphasize some of the helpful featuresof Gliessman’s figure, most notably its emphasis onagriculture as having a broad array of connectionswith human endeavour, including aspects generallynot thought of immediately as having agricultural

consequence, such as recycling. To do agricultureis to do many things, not one alone, the figurerightly tells us, as it is indeed hitched to muchelse. Moreover, the figure plainly speaks to theneed for more than one disciplinary voice tohandle this involved hugeness. This is all to thegood.

But let us next note some matters that this figure,and approach, does not easily alert us to. First,there is its neat and tidy appearance, with preciselines and boxes and arrows and feedbacks, drawnwith computerized exactness. Second, there is thelanguage Gleissman’s article uses to describe thisview of agroecology – that it is based on ‘thebalance needed for long-term sustainability’, thatit is ‘a functional system of complementaryrelations’, that it strives for ‘equilibrium’, albeit a

Figure 1 From Gliessman (2004): the ‘functional and structural components of an ecosystem converted to a sustainableagroecosystem’



‘dynamic’ one (Gliessman, 2004: 19–21). Similarlanguage shapes the depiction of an agriculturalsystem in Spedding (1988) as ‘operating togetherfor a common purpose’, or as ‘integrated to accom-plish a well-defined purpose’ (Peart & Shoup,2004: 2). Like Gleissman’s diagram, words andphrases like complementarity, equilibrium, balance,common purpose and integration portray agro-ecology as orderly, articulated and unified: as clean.But is the world a neat and tidy place, at least alwaysand everywhere? In a connected world, how canwe draw such precise boundaries through reality?And where is there scope for change, beyond adynamic return to equilibrium? Is agriculture sofinished, complete, and balanced out?

Complexity theory would argue that it is not,and that systems thinking is as much an effort tocreate a sense of order as it is to find it. The term‘complexity’ is used both colloquially and formallyin several ways. As well, some theorists have madebroadly equivalent arguments without invoking theword ‘complexity’ as their central term, such asCheckland and Scholes’s ‘soft systems method-ology’. We use ‘complexity’ in part as a shorthandto differentiate this broad body of work from thetidy view of systems, in much the way that Rosen(2000) does. Rosen begins with the view that allreality is complex, in the sense that any givenaction has the potential to cause unexpectedresults in unexpected places. For Rosen (2000:306), ‘a system is called complex if it has a nonsi-mulable model’. In other words, a complex modelexpects unpredictability. In this sense, the moreaccurate model is a less accurate model.

One could, of course, deliberately choose tostudy a portion of reality by imagining it as whatRosen (2000) has suggested terming a ‘simplesystem’ – that is, as a collection of entities andinteractions whose behaviors we can ‘model’through equations and algorithms and thuspredict with some acceptable amount of error.Such simple system models may be highly detailed,for example those used in weather forecasting –numerical models of the atmosphere are amongthe most sophisticated and computationally inten-sive simulations that exist of any physicaldomain. They are nonetheless simple in the sensethat they presume an ordered predictability.There may be considerable utility in having sucha model, for the result is more easily

comprehensible and programmable, and easier toact on. Weather forecasts, for all their known andlikely irresolvable inaccuracies, help billionsthrough their day. But the tidiness of a simplesystems model will in most circumstances involvea fair bit of sweeping under the rug.

In simple systems, then, we assume we haveknowledge of all of the relevant parts and theirinterconnections and interactions, while in com-plexity we take it as a starting point that this isnot possible. In philosophical terms, then, epistem-ology and ontology are equal in simple systems,that is, we know about the system (epistemology)as a result of the fact that we chose what entitiesand relationships to include (ontology) in oursimple representation (Rosen, 2000: 281). Thenumerical simulation models widely used in agron-omy are simple in this sense. They are viewed bytheir creators and users as generic descriptions ofphenomena of interest, for example, how seeds,soil, water and sunlight interact to bring forth acrop. Comparisons to actual observations areimperfect presumably because of some specialcharacteristic of the harvested test plot. This isexactly the opposite of Rosen’s perspective, that is,that reality is complex and the generic situation;for Rosen, the simple model, because we havemade choices about what to exclude, is special andtherefore of limited applicability (Rosen, 2000: 304).

Allen et al. (2001) have proposed a more fullypostmodern approach to the selectivity of systemthinking, arguing that systems are always storiesinevitably told from the perspective of a storyteller,and that, properly understood, this is not necess-arily cause for intellectual alarm. They point outthat narrative allows the storyteller to adroitlyleap over manifold scales of space and time whendescribing the web of involvements an actionmight entail. This expansion/compression of timeand space greatly reduces the care required in defin-ing system boundaries, if not negating it altogether.Here the analyst need no longer support a conjec-ture with, for example, output of a meter-scalehourly timestep model purportedly simulating con-tinents over centuries. This narrative approach(correctly) understands that this is not likely validanyway, and rather draws on whatever argumentsare at hand for looking ahead. But as we lookthrough the recent pages of our agroecologicaljournals, we see little explicit use of such a



postmodern take on complexity and narrative.Most authors continue to use a simple systemsontology and epistemology. For them perhaps thepostmodern view is intellectually alarming, ormaybe it seems more a matter of philosophicaltruth than the practical truth they seek.

We thus detect a nervousness in the currentmoment: while it seems plain now that the confi-dences of reductionism were misplaced, and that amore connected view is necessary, a deep dilemmahas opened up in agroecological thinking. Simplesystems are solvable but wrong, while complexitytheory is unsolvable but right. Neither seems a com-fortable position to maintain, but perhaps throughappeal to both schools of thought we can developnew conceptual tools to help us think about andact creatively within human-environmental relation-ships like agriculture.

From systems thinking to holonicthinking

We would like to suggest a theoretical frameworkby which agroecologists might better accommodatethe subjectivity and narrative boundary problems,as well as the crucial issues of innovation andchange. We propose drawing into agroecology anumber of ideas from complex system thinking,specifically a reconceptualization of holonic think-ing. We first introduce the holon and the concep-tual aid of flickering.

Seeing holons requires flickering

The term holon was proposed by Arthur Koestler(1967) to address the problem that interesting enti-ties in biology and society are in many senseswholes, but, on the other hand, can not be under-stood without recognition of contexts in whichthey survive. For Koestler holons are entities thathave autonomy in some senses, yet are clearly apart of something larger in other senses. As Koes-tler (1967: 210) put it, ‘Parts and wholes in anabsolute sense do not exist in the domain of life.The concept of the holon is intended to reconcileatomistic and holistic approaches.’ Clear candi-dates for the holon label include individualhumans and university departments: to answermany questions that one might raise about them

it is essential to envision each simultaneously as awhole and as a part of other entities. An individualcarries on physiological functions as a whole, yetexchanges food and waste as part of an ecology.The academic department carries out many func-tions autonomously from the university in whichit is embedded, often to its regret and frustration,yet has little meaning outside the context of thelarger institution, which has its own autonomousmovements. Switching to an agricultural frame,certainly an individual animal reared as part of anagricultural endeavour may at times be usefullythought of as a whole, that is, it most probablyhas intent and capability (about which we willhave more to say later), and perhaps moralstanding in its own right, but is also part of afarm. We may say as much (if not more) of thefarmer himself or herself. Both animal and farmerare part of the farm holon, while themselvesbeing wholes comprised of parts, just as the farmis part of larger holons, such as the agriculturaleconomy.

A holon exists within an ecology of contexts.These contexts collectively form the situation inwhich the holon functions. Contexts important tothe farmer might include, for example, family,farm business, genetic heart disease, and spiritualbeliefs (see Bawden & Ison, 1992 for a richcompilation of the breadth of the issues thatimaginably enter here). The holon is a nexus ofmany contexts, involved in infinite ways withthem, yet still an identifiable entity. Indeed weonly recognize anything as a separate entity if it issomehow visible against the background of itscontexts – it is the contrast with these contextsthat give the object of our attention any identityat all. A particular context of a holon may itselfbe a holon, but not necessarily (a point we willreturn to).

These contexts are incommensurable, that is, theycannot be compared directly to one another, orconverted to a common unit of measurement,despite the best efforts of economists. They are asdiverse as the farmer’s beliefs about the sentienceof livestock and the cost of corn. An importantimplication of incommensurability is the impossi-bility of calculating optimal configurations of theholon. Determining such optimal arrangementsrequires the ability to mathematically trade abit more of this for a bit less of that, but



incommensurability makes this impossible. At thescale of the individual farm it may be a choicebetween growing more corn or creating habitatattractive to grassland birds, while at the inter-national scale it may be low-cost shrimp at thecost of mangroves.

A holon thus bounds a collection of entities thatare involved with one another relatively intimately.This close involvement within a holon suggests thata change, movement, or action somewhere withinthe holon does not happen in isolation of the restof the holon, for example, a major loss of healthby one member of a farm family likely has fairlyimmediate repercussions throughout the enterprise.In contrast the holon is less intimately involvedwith the broader ecosystem of contexts in whichit exists, and not all changes in a context willnecessarily impact the holon appreciably. Whilethe farm holon is likely impacted by the health ofeach member of the household, it is far less clearthat the health of the top government official in acountry’s department of agriculture would havesignificant implications. But it might – any involve-ment leaves open the possibility that the effective-ness of this distant official might be significant tothe farm, if government policies changed as aresult of his or her illness.

Allen and colleagues (Ahl & Allen, 1996; Allen& Starr, 1982) further elaborated the holonconcept, emphasizing, as did Koestler, a presumedhierarchical organization of living and socialsystems. For us hierarchical organization ishelpful for building the notion of holons (as evi-denced by our earlier examples), but the holonand its ecology of contexts is much too messy tobe usefully envisioned solely in hierarchical terms.Rather, our development of the concept of holontakes seriously Koestler’s suggestion that bothparts and wholes do not exist in an absolutesense. Systems thinking, even when embracingcomplexity, has continually placed its emphasison the notion that parts do not absolutely exist –that they are always connected to something else,and that one can never do, or be, one thing. Thisboundless view, while a vital insight, all too easilyslides into the view that all is an appropriately con-nected whole, that is, functionalism. Our case is forrecovering Koestler’s implication that we shouldequally interrogate the manifestations of wholenessin what is readily seen as a part (of some greater

whole). Thus parts require wholes, wholes requireparts, and yet neither pure parts nor wholes actu-ally exist.

There is, however, no necessary discomfort inthis paradox. The trick is to learn to continuallyswitch back and forth between the perspective ofthe part and the perspective of the whole, some-thing we call flickering. The imperative of flickeringarises because, for most of us, our minds seek tosettle on a single representation of an entity.Think of the well-known outline drawings thatappear to be of two different depictions, dependingon very small changes of focus. In one of these,many observers first see a goblet, while others seetwo faces in silhouette. Our vision tends to settleon one or the other and must be consciouslypulled to see the other. So the patterns of whiteand black are (at least) two distinct images, justas a holon is both a part of something greater anda whole in its own right. Flickering gives us a toolwith which we can engage the paradox thatholons are simultaneously wholes and parts (thesubjectivity boundary problem) and players in aset of sometimes competing stories (the narrativeboundary problem). Further, while holons areboth part and whole, they are not completed, com-pletely worked-out manifestations of either. Thewhole is always reshaping its parts, the parts thatconstitute the whole are ever changing, and thusso is the resultant whole, and so the very bound-aries around what might be identified as a partare transient. Flickering helps us imagine the cogni-tive ‘light touch’ that allows us to remain open to afuller range of possible interpretations of things andevents. Flickering gives us a glimpse of the holon’stranscendence of part and whole – an ephemeralstate between these two far more concrete ideas –as the flickering light is between on and off.

The point here is not to argue against everdrawing a boundary – to do so is to put asidethought. But we need to see an agroecologicalboundary as a kind of two-ness, not a hard singu-larity. Envisioning a holon’s bounds too tangiblyrisks atomizing the situation, while too ephemerala boundary leads to complete dissipation of thetopic and thus toward a totalizing holism. Flicker-ing keeps this problem ever in our minds. We needthis conceptual stereo view, with one eye for part-ness and one for wholeness, to avoid conceptualstereotypes. We need a continual shifting back



and forth in our depth of focus: every whole a part;every part a whole; every whole and part neither. Itis not intellectually uncomfortable to do so. Indeed,we submit, this flickering is the most every day ofacts, as we negotiate our own lives as parts,wholes, and neither.

Intentionality bounds holons

We have proposed that the holon is a useful con-ceptualization of a to-a-degree bounded entitywithin a web of involvements. Its usefulness foraddressing the boundary problems, however,turns critically on our ability to decide what isand is not a holon and what is included in some-thing so identified. We propose that intentionalityis the primary criterion for identifying and bound-ing a holon. By intentionality we mean the activeenvisioning and seeking of a set of goals, such asthe farm family working and planning so thatthey may continue to derive a livelihood by collect-ing milk from cows. Active intentionalities in theworld seek to maintain themselves as wholes ofmutually involved parts, and this usually requiresthat they also try to maintain themselves as partsinvolved in wholes, through their flickered imagin-ation of themselves and their contexts. The humansin a farming enterprise try to maintain the farm as awhole amid the colliding disjunctures of eachpassing day, and do so in part by trying to maintainthe farm as a part of markets, cultures, and ecol-ogies that may not integrate with the farm asclosely as those humans might like. They try toget along better with each other within the farm,just as they try to have the farm get along betterwith changing prices, values, and rainfall. Thepotential for a better state to get to comes from aholonic recognition that no whole or part is justthat, a part or whole over and done with, andthat wholeness and partness are always changing.Intentionalities strive for and act on these poten-tials, and in the process create them. At the sametime, contexts shape the direction – the sense ofmotivational pull – of intentionality toward avision or plan (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998;Martin, 2003). Intentionality emerges out of thecontexts in which it seeks to act, possibly trans-forming them.

Looking toward intentionality as a guide to theboundary problem appeals to Ahl and Allen’s

(1996) suggestion that a ‘robust’ boundary is onethat remains useful from multiple prespectives, or‘observation regimes’. Such multiple perspectivesarise with both the subjective and narrative bound-ary problems. Perspectives might be variations onwhat physiological phenomena can (or must forthe work to be valid) be included in research onmeasuring animal welfare – a subjective boundaryissue – or on what story about the role of animalsin agriculture we are trying to tell – a narrativeboundary issue. By the criterion of utility from mul-tiple perspectives farms are appropriately holons,for they are, at least, sources of livelihoods forowners and workers, centres of economic activity,producers of food, and large-scale manipulationsof land, air and water resources.

A holon may have capability to affect change insome of its contexts, but not in others. Here wehave in mind a holonic take on Amartya Sen andMartha Nussbaum’s vision of a person’s ability tobe and to do (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993; Sen, 1992,1999). In the language of agency, we mean thatan intentionality’s agency towards somethingmust also be understood in the context of itsagency from, its degree of release (Bell, forthcom-ing). Regardless of how hard a farmer tries to actintentionally towards the rain, he or she lacks capa-bility over the atmosphere. Conversely, the choicesa farmer makes about tillage, manure and croprotations can affect soil, expanding or contractingthe possibilities this context provides. Understand-ing the capability (or lack thereof) a farmer hasover specific contexts is an essential task for boththe farmer and the agroecosystem analyst.Farmers can ill afford to tilt at windmills, even ifthe agrotechnologist has scientifically determinedthat it is a new and better way to do agriculture.On the other hand, a rich appreciation of the possi-bilities for beneficial positive feedbacks fromimproved soil health can pay dividends.

Appealing to intentionality as a criterion foridentifying holons leads us to see that some com-ponents of the farm (or any other) holon are them-selves holons, while others are not. Similarly, someof the contexts in which a holon exists may them-selves be holons, but not all are. What a farmercan do and be is surely shaped by the tractor, andthus the tractor acts upon the farm and thefarmer, and is not merely pushed around by thefarm and the farmer. The tractor has capability, it



has consequence, and it acts in the world just ashumans do, as the sociologist Latour has socopiously argued. But any intentionality for thetractor must come from beyond its own surface.Indeed, it is that external intentionality thatmakes it a tractor to begin with, and not, say, aninteresting work of iron sculpture to be admiredin the front lawn, or a place to build a nest forthe new litter of ratlings.

Not all boundaries of consequence are holonicboundaries. In our development of the concept ofa holon, a holonic boundary is a boundary thatintentionally tries to maintain itself as such, as asurface of consequence, across the changingdynamics of its situation. The tractor does notmaintain itself (much as a farmer might wish itwould), not as a tractor nor a sculpture nor a nestsite. It is the holonic intentionalities of the worldthat give the tractor’s particular capability itsspecific consequence. Or not. A tractor, then, isnot a holon.

By contrast, take a mule. Intentionalities externalto the mule might find very different consequence init. A farmer might see a form of animal traction, achild might see a dangerous threat, and a fly mightsee a source of nourishment. But apart from what-ever these external intentionalities might find of con-sequence in the mule, the mule will act on its ownwith regard to its bounding surface, seeking tokeep that surface as a persisting, yet fluxing,source of consequence. A mule, then, is a holon.

As we have noted, some of the contexts in whichour holon exists are themselves holons, manifestingintentionalities. As holons go about the work of per-sisting they ignore the intentionalities of otherholons at their peril, for example, the farmershould realize that the banker seeks to minimizerisk and maximize profit by charging higher interestto those who can least afford it, or that transnationalfood companies seek the lowest-cost supplies of rawmaterial. Similarly, external analysts, for example,agroecologists, will miss a good bit of the story ifthey fail to recognize and acknowledge intentional-ity in the holons they study. Finally, a great varietyof intentionalities in the world are themselvesacting from concepts of the farm as a fundamentalconstruct, helping justify our frequent contentionthat the farm is a useful and compelling holon.

Summarizing our argument to this point, then,the holon is an intentional entity embedded in an

ecology of contexts. The totality of the holon andits contexts is an involved hugeness, and yet unfina-lized. If we wish to conduct research in order toeffect change we must draw some boundarieswithin this hugeness, and intentionality offers asurface that is imaginable, appropriately poorlydefined and porous in spots, and of great signifi-cance to the persistence of the sorts of entities wecare about understanding more richly.

Representing holons

Many of us would find useful a visual rhetoric fordescribing holon agroecology. There is dangerhere, as the stability of the inscribed page impliesthe very completeness and settlement that wewish to keep forever in question. We elect toattempt the visual, deciding in favour of perhapsserving a broader community, at the risk ofmaking too concrete our concept of the holon.Describing our visual representation will also giveus opportunities to address and develop severalimplications of a holonic approach, including con-texts, incommensurability, change, and flickering.

Figure 2 shows a farm holon from two perspec-tives. In the centre of each view we show a semi-distinct entity – the farm holon – with an irregularsurface and with many internal entities, also withsimilarly irregular internal surfaces. These entitiesdo not necessarily quite fit together, and we havetried to show them with overlaps and disjunctures(which are more apparent in a color version ofthe figure). But they are acting, perhaps sloppilyand disjointedly, to create and maintain the farmholon. Some of these internal entities are them-selves holons, for example, farm family members,hired labourers, and farm animals, while othersdo not constitute a surface of intentionality ontheir own, and thus are not holons.

In the upper panel the holon creates a nexus ofthe contexts in which, and with which, it must con-struct and continually reconstruct itself. We show afew – family and finance, the crop environment,markets and subsidies and spiritual beliefs – forillustrative purposes only. There is no limit tothese, either empirically or conceptually. Some con-texts may act holonically on their own, and fromthat point of view it would seem that a wiseanalyst, and the wise holon, would recognize thatcharacteristic. The state, for example, is a context



for probably every farm holon in the modern worldand one that, holonically, tries to maintain itsboundary. The climate, however, may be a simi-larly pervasive context that, while perhaps attimes helpfully imagined as an intentional entity,as in myth and story, does not try to maintainitself as a holon.

In any event, it is crucial to note in Figure 2 thatthe contexts extend into the holon. Markets are notseparate from the farm holon. That is why marketsmatter for the farm holon, and why farm holonsmatter for the market. Many (if not all) of the enti-ties that we represent as being internal to the farm

holon also extend outside of it. The little irregularshapes we see in the holon are, in most circum-stances, cross-sections of entities that extendbeyond the farm, and often well beyond it. Achild may labour on the farm at the weekend, andnever leave its confines, but on Monday takes thebus for school, and thereby contributes to the con-struction of a school as holon. A farm animal maylive all its life within the legal property boundariesof the farm, but its genetic history and its conse-quence for markets and the cleanliness of thelocal water supply extend far beyond into otherholons and non-holonic contexts.

Each context depicted in the upper panel ofFigure 2 is a bundle of interactions between theholon whole and the environments in which itexists. The lower panel unpacks what we havechosen to bundle as the ‘crop environment’context of a farm: past cropping, hydraulic charac-teristics, and so on. But any of the parts of thisbundle is a context that could be elevated suchthat it appeared in the upper panel. The analysthas freedom to chose the contexts relevant to thequestion at hand, and is ever at risk of overlookinga context that is dramatically shaping the farmholon. The arrows in the lower panel remind usthat interactions between the farm holon and itscontexts are multidirectional. The farm has variousdegrees of capability with regard to various con-texts. Toward some the farm has essentially none,for example, climate, while toward others it mayhave considerable capability, for example, debt.Contexts might always be said (perhaps trivially)to have capability over the farm, or we would nothave recognized them as relevant in the first place.

The holon and its contexts in the graphic depic-tion of Figure 2 are collectively the larger wholethat systems thinking attempts to map. The farmis a part of this larger whole, but is itself, in mul-tiple ways, a whole – a holon. Here the importanceof flickering arises, as it helps us to see the whole/part nature of the holon. The holon is in manyimportant ways a whole, but it is also shaped byand helps construct its contexts. Our flickeredimagining of this dual nature helps us envisionthe many-dimensional and porous boundary ofthe holon. In turn, this virtual boundary gives theholon (and our conceptualization of it) thefreedom to be the animated, ever-in-flux entity itmust be in order to persist. Here we arrive at the

Figure 2 The farm is depicted as the three-dimensional,roughly spherical body at the centre of the upper and lowerpanel images. The upper panel depicts the farm holonexisting simultaneously within four incommensurable setsof contexts. The lower panel depicts the farm holonembedded in but one of these, its crop environment. Thisset of contexts is represented as a two-dimensional space(a plane in the page), in which the farm we wish to studymust operate. That is, whatever it is that the farm does itmust do successfully within the facets of the cropenvironment context (e.g. rainfall climate, soil hydrauliccharacteristics) of its geographic location. These contextsare illustrative only – for particular analyses a different arraywould likely be appropriate.



problem of change, and the ways in which theholon helps us accommodate this imperative.

Holons and change

The holon exists, and seeks to persist, in its ecologyof contexts. Individual contexts likely accommo-date, and indeed encourage, any of several alterna-tive configurations of the holon. However, theholon’s configuration must be at least tolerated inall of its multiple, incommensurable contexts. Forus to even notice a holon in the first place it musthave earlier found such a configuration. But aninstant later contexts and holons have changed –an illness or a price increase forces reassessment,and likely some reconfiguration, if the holon is topersist. For better or for worse, change is inevita-ble. This need to find a way of existing in anecology of contexts, and that this ecology forcesconstant reconfiguration, motivates our contention(approaching insistence) that agroecosystem analy-sis should begin with a reverence for the farmer’sorganizational genius and planning.

The holonic interpretation we propose invitesand provides conceptual room for the change thatis essential to carrying on in an ever-evolvingenvironment – ‘the constant dance of cognitivesystems, continually shaping, learning, and adapt-ing to their environment . . .’ as Pretty (2002: 149)described a central idea of the biologist-philoso-phers Varela and Maturana. The concept of theholon introduces into the greater web of involve-ment an entity with intentionality, and this inten-tionality provides the motive force for theceaseless planning and action that is required toguide the change that is imperative to the holon’ssurvival. For Fuenmayor (1991) intentionalitycauses the holon to be ‘thrown’ from the presenttowards a future state, but we envision a greatdeal more many-directional pushing and pulling,from and toward, as it moves through time, con-tinuously reassessing its relational involvements.

That the holon finds viable configurations doesnot mean that it is free of internal tensions, forexample, a grower of organic grains may feeluncomfortable with the repeated soil tillageneeded to manage weeds, given the implicationsfor erosion. While a particular solution may seemto conveniently and with little compromise beworkable in two or three contexts, it likely will

be unsatisfying in others. The incommensurabilityof contexts makes full resolution of conflicts unim-aginable, i.e. every present solution is provisional,and subsequent re-evaluations may arrive at adifferent choice as the wisest. Further, the incom-mensurability of the holon’s contexts means thatit cannot be fully optimized, for example, a success-ful farm can never be simply the diligent appli-cation of the contents of the collected technicalbulletins from the university.

Every holon is unique in both its present stateand how it will react to changing contexts. Thepresent state of the bundle of contexts in which itexists, and the path by which they evolved areunique, shaped by accidents of history. Thus a com-plete articulation of the present state of the holon isimpossible. Further, and perhaps more significantlyfor the analyst, so too is predicting the holon’s reac-tion to changing contexts. This unpredictability hasmultiple origins, including, at least, historical con-tingency, un-unified intentionalities and the senseof permission to create that a holon may gainfrom its contexts, for example, democracy versusauthoritarianism (Bell, forthcoming). Historicalcontingency, that is, that what will happen hereand now, is powerfully shaped by the particularhistory of the holon and, possibly, some of itsimportant contexts. Legacies of past experienceare embedded in the repertoire of reactions fromwhich the holon draws as it reacts to a new environ-ment – the schemata of Gell-Mann’s complexadaptive systems (Gell-Mann, 1994, 1995).

The intentionality of the holon, in spite of itscentrality, can never be unified – the holon’s inten-tionality is not singular, but rather always at oddswith itself. There are two sources of disunity, thefirst of which are tensions that arise from the irre-solvable task of seeking satisfaction simultaneouslyin incommensurable contexts. Just as incommen-surability makes impossible the calculation of anoptimal outcome, it makes unimaginable a single,clear intentionality guiding the holon. The secondsource of disjunct intentionalities is political –member holons of a holon may have different inter-ests and priorities. A farm holon that includesmembers who have a passion for grassland birdsand others who desire to be known as the ownersof the largest herd of cows in the state will likelywork from an un-unified intentionality. The richarray of possibilities by which the holon might



react to changing contexts as a result of historicalcontingency and un-unified intentionalities shouldhumble the analyst and policy maker.

But there is reason to believe that a holon’s beha-viour will not be random: intentionalities havedirectionalities from and towards that they andtheir (holonic) contexts try to maintain, and inthat sense have a kind of stability that is in somedegree predictable. But at the same time, theycarry on with those directionalities by constantlyreconfiguring their stabilities amid the unfinishedpossibilities of the world, in ways that neitherthey nor we can ever fully prejudge. This constantseeing and reseeing of a holon’s boundaries isanother essential feature of the epistemology offlickering. It entails an acceptance of directedunpredictability, and is a large part of what wemean by holonic thinking’s reverence for planning.

We thus stress the unfinished quality of holonicinvolvement that we label unfinalizability, a termwe borrow from Bakhtin (1981, 1984). There isalways – always – slippage along, and within, aholonic boundary. There is always an untidinessto reality. There is always tension between connect-edness and unconnectedness. And it is a good thingtoo, for it is here in this potential for the continualreworking of that which was thought to be workedout that we discover the possibility for change, andindeed for life. A fully bounded and connectedworld is a frozen world, incapable of supportinglife and its inherent capacity for change. Holonicthinking, however, with its stereo, flickering viewis constantly in motion, never accepting an icy fina-lization of involvement. As the holon continuouslyrearranges itself, its external connections – its webof involvements – will also necessarily change. Theholon perspective therefore accepts both an unpre-dictability of involvement and, fortunately, acertain predictability in that unpredictability.

Holons as narrative

To engage in holonic thinking is, of course, to con-struct narratives. It is a way to tell stories about theworld. It is not the world itself. (Nothing but theworld can make that claim.) But holonic thinking,as we have been conceptualizing it, also offers anargument for tracking through the endless swampof postmodern discourse analysis, in which we are

unable to agree on any distinctions in the gloom.While we are free to choose whatever holonicidentifications we like, the analyst who exerciseshis or her intentionality with no regard to theholonic identifications of other intentionalitiesrisks mistaking turnips for watches, wishes forhorses, beggars for aristocrats. Holons may be con-structions, but they have real consequences. Inten-tionalities may only imagine their holonicboundaries and their contexts, but the directionstheir actions follow as a result shape their livesand ours mightily. Intentional actions give persist-ence to flux, and flux to persistence. They createsubjects and objects, texts and contexts.

The fluxing persistences and persisting fluxeswrought by intentionalities offer the analyst a greatconceptual opportunity: A really helpful way tobegin to understand the world is to try to understandit as others do, and then watch carefully for theconsequences of those understandings, with alltheir conflicts and asymmetries. Understand holonsas holons understand themselves, and study as theytry to organize and reorganize themselves and theircontexts accordingly. Make it a crucial analytic actof the agroecological endeavour to look for holonicboundaries that others are trying, with assuredlyvarying degrees of success, to draw, and to studythe contextual relations that give such impetus.

From the perspective of practical application,holon agroecology offers suggestions, if not arough framework, for students (be they under-graduates or national officials) of agriculture asthey seek to understand or influence the behaviourof those who seek livelihoods from plant andanimal increase. Because the farm holon must con-stantly seek a configuration that is viable in mul-tiple, incommensurable contexts, the studentshould first seek to understand this constellationof contexts much as the farmer does. An opennessand humility is required to avoid overlookingpowerful, yet perhaps foreign (to the analyst) con-texts. Closely related is the narrative boundaryproblem – farmer and agroecosystem analyst maystart from fundamentally different premises aboutthe meanings of an agricultural endeavour.Further, the analyst is well served by delayingnormative judgments as long as possible, byapproaching the farm holon with a reverence forthe organization and planning that is required tocreate and maintain a farm holon.



Conclusion

The time is long past, or so we hope, when anyoneseriously considers understanding the involved huge-ness of agroecology with the metaphor of themachine. And yet the turn to systems thinking, as itis currently developed in much of agroecology, hasmoved on less than we often recognize. The simplesystems approach, even when applied in a detailedand elaborate way, retains many of the features ofthe machine metaphor. Interactions are clear, comp-lementary, balanced, and directed to commonpurpose in ways that yield the analyst a confidentsense of interventionist power and control in a fullyconnected world. Such a rhetoric and mood has adefinite mechanistic feel, albeit assuredly a moreinformed mechanism than the simple simpleapproach of the machine metaphor of earlier science.

We have argued that the concept of the holon, inwhich neither parts nor wholes exist in an absolutesense, can be developed to appreciate the incompleteand incommensurable quality of involvement thatstems from the unfinalizability of contextual inten-tionality. We have suggested tracing holon bound-aries by looking for the intentionalities that seek toconstruct themselves from the fluxing welter ofcontext. The agroecology analyst would do well totake careful note of these constructions, their con-ditions and their real consequences – an appreci-ation we have called a reverence for planning.

While we believe that there is reason to hope agroe-cologists will find our arguments worth engaging, weworry that the influence of the language of systemsthinking will make our argument seem oppositional,and perhaps even threatening. Much has been learnedin agroecology through the application of a systemspoint of view, and many may wonder why wewould appear to question that. We do not questionthat. Rather, we worry that we often reach beyondthe safe height of its conceptual ladder. Complexitytheory for some time has recognized that this limitis often exceeded. Our goal has been to providemore secure footings for the needed conceptual exten-sions – the search for ‘a more comprehensive onto-logical and epistemological framework for studyingfarm enterprises’, called for by Noe and Alrøe (2006).

We do not ask for the banishment of simplesystems thinking, then. There are times when ashorter ladder is just what is needed. Situations in

which the recognition of intentionality is less directlyrelevant to one’s purposes – when it is only, or nearlyonly, the analyst’s own intentionality that shapes thepurpose of the encounter with the world – then asimple systems ladder is likely to be very useful.

But such a singularity is an ontological conceit,and we forget this at our peril. Sustainabilityentails contending with the disjunct openness ofan incomplete world of intentionalities that areneither part nor whole. Sustainability meanskeeping life flickering amid these ongoing, if un-balanced and asymmetrical, consequences of unfina-lizability. Sustainability, then, means possibility,and possibility means intentionality.

Koestler called the book in which he introducedthe concept of the holon The Ghost in the Machine.Our argument has been that intentionality is theholonic ghost which prevents the world from everbeing a machine. It is this hopeful thought thatwe invite agroecologists to sustain.

Note

1. Although we do not list our names alphabetically,the work (and responsibility) for this article isequally shared by the two of us.

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