Entangled Matters aims to reveal the networks of encounters, connections and relationships in which thought, knowledge and imagination take shape, bringing their collective and connective dimension to the fore.

Modern knowledge has long relied on clear separations: between natural and social sciences, nature and culture, subjects and objects, individuals and their environments. But can these divisions still help us imagine other futures in a time of ecological and social transformation?

This collection invites us to think of societies as ecosystems: not simply as collections of individuals, but as living webs of interdependence in which humans, animals, plants, technologies, environments and materials continuously affect and transform one another. An ecosystem, from this perspective, is never merely “natural”: it is also political and historical, shaped by relations of care and cooperation, but also by extraction, inequality and human intervention.

What might we learn from looking more closely at the ways ecosystems evolve, coexist, exchange, transform and make space for one another? The collection gathers perspectives and practices that invite us to explore eight ecosystemic principles:

Ecosystems as evolutionary biospheres — systems in which all living things change, and therefore historical systems.

Ecosystems as threshold systems — places where boundaries become new living worlds.

Ecosystems as uncanny, romantic, sublime — what remains of these experiences when nature has been mastered?

Ecosystems as sympoiesis — living systems that co-create, co-shape, co-maintain and co-transform.

Ecosystems as lability — precarious, vulnerable and dynamic equilibria.

Ecosystems as give and take — cycles in which death, decay and transformation generate new life.

Ecosystems as coexistence — diversity as a condition for shelter, nourishment and life.

Ecosystems as messy and untidy — disorder as an asset for biodiversity.

Together, these principles invite us to reconsider not only how we understand ecosystems, but how we understand ourselves within them — and what other forms of living together they might allow us to imagine.