One Thread, Many Worlds: A Reflection on Ontology, Truth, and Political Ecology

A reflective piece by Shaimaa Asami

While early approaches in political ecology often assumed a single socio-natural reality, later thinkers such as Blaser and Escobar (2016) have challenged this view. Their “third wave” approach argues for ontological multiplicity - the idea that multiple, equally real worlds exist, shaped by different cultural and material practices. This shift has opened new possibilities for understanding political and ecological realities, but it has also raised concerns. Some critics fear that embracing many realities might make it harder - or even impossible - to denounce political and ecological injustices in a clear and unified way.

But does acknowledging multiple worlds really prevent us from engaging with claims that fall outside dominant realities? I don’t believe it necessarily does. The relationship is more complicated - and more interesting - than that.

Ontology, at its core, is about what the world is made of. That question doesn’t have one answer. What is real and alive in one context may not even be recognized in another. For example, in many Western frameworks, the existence of spirits is excluded or dismissed. Yet in other places, spirits are a fundamental part of daily life and of the landscape itself. Despite this, ontology is sometimes treated as something that belongs only to Western philosophy, which I find deeply contradictory to its purpose.

Above the clouds aka the white world - Photo by Shaimaa Asami on Unsplash

In political ecology, critics like Blaser and Escobar argue that mainstream approaches tend to separate nature and culture and push aside other forms of knowing - other stories, other truths. And while I agree that in lived experience nature and culture are often inseparable, I also believe that temporarily separating them - even just analytically - can be useful. It can help us trace the first thread of a problem, identify a contradiction, or begin to understand an injustice.

But that’s just the beginning. Once that thread is found, re-integrating nature and culture - and opening up to multiple ontologies - becomes not only helpful, but necessary. Without doing so, we risk seeing only part of the picture. We might even end up reinforcing the very forms of exclusion we’re trying to challenge.

I once came across a striking idea: some Amazonian tribes believe that when the anaconda exhales, the water level of the river rises - the anaconda here being not just a snake, but a powerful water spirit and central figure in indigenous cosmologies. From a scientific point of view, this may sound like a myth or metaphor. But for the people who live in that world, it’s reality. Their ontology includes the anaconda as a living agent in shaping the river and the environment. Denying that reality doesn’t make it disappear - it only reveals the limits of our own.

This reminds me, too, of the idea of truth and power in the work of Marx and Foucault. Marx saw dominant ideas as constraints that prevent us from seeing what is really going on beneath the surface. Foucault, on the other hand, suggested that even Marxism is a kind of truth-based governmentality, a way of organizing the world and behavior around a prescribed idea of what is real. According to Foucault, there is no truth outside of power. I see a similar pattern in indigenous cosmologies, where people act in certain ways because that’s how the world is structured - and that structure itself is a kind of truth. This stands in sharp contrast to the more materialist commitment of eco-Marxism, which seeks to uncover the drivers of a singular social reality.

All of this leaves me somewhere in the middle. I don’t think a commitment to a plurality of worlds automatically prevents engagement with those that don’t fit dominant logic. But I also see that sometimes, we need to start from within a dominant frame - not to accept it fully, but to begin tracing the conditions that produce injustice in the first place. Only then can we move beyond those frames and into the messy, layered, and multiple realities that people actually live in.

In the end, it’s not about choosing between one world or many. It’s about knowing when to zoom in and when to zoom out - when to separate, and when to reconnect. The risk of multiplicity is confusion, yes. But the risk of singularity is erasure. And in the work of political ecology, both risks matter.

For reference: Blaser, M., & Escobar, A. (2016). Political ecology. Keywords in the study of environment and culture, 164-167.