Relational Ecosystems: Sustaining Prefigurative Change by Creating Conditions for Mutual Learning and Change

This article coins and develops the notion of relational ecosystems to address the existential paradox cutting across theories and practices of prefigurative change. Innovative ways of relating, thinking, and acting that aim to transform hegemonic state powers struggle to sustain themselves in interaction with governance systems that stimulated such prefigurative change. This paradox has given rise to cross-disciplinary calls to reimagine our political-economic ecology and devise frameworks and strategies to transform it. A popular line of thinking is to sustain prefigurative change through ‘ecosystems’, but this will remain wishful thinking if we do not clarify what their anchoring assumptions about reality and political institutions are and explain how these could be transformed. This article creates untapped cross-disciplinary synergies by developing conceptual and empirical understanding of why and how to coproduce relational ecosystems in hegemonic contexts. Based on an innovative interpretive analysis of the ecosystem of Liverpool (UK), I articulate four original propositions about the real-world consequences and creation of relational ecosystems that can guide future research and practice. My main argument is that relational ecosystems could sustain prefigurative change by creating conditions for mutual learning and change, reciprocal ethics and relationships, shared responsibility, and supporting innovative practices on their own terms.