Ecologies of Care Framework; from Polycrisis to Polyresponse.
Ecologies of Care: A new operational framework for polyresponse to polycrisis
Concept Summary
The contemporary global condition is increasingly characterised by polycrisis: a convergence of interlinked ecological, social, economic, and geopolitical emergencies that interact non-linearly and amplify one another. As Morin and Kern (1999) argued decades ago, we are continuing to attempt to solve systemic problems with the very tools that produced them; reductionist thinking, siloed governance, technological solutionism, and a cultural narrative built on scarcity, extraction, and colonial style domination. Traditional management and design frameworks also remain ill-equipped to navigate this landscape, relying on linearity in a world defined by complexity, turbulence, and cascading failure.
Ecologies of Care proposes a new operational framework for navigating this era. It aims to be utilised as a polyresponse model that shifts the foundational orientation of projects, organisations, and systems from control to ongoing relationality. Ecologies of Care integrates a philosophical reorientation with an overarching narrative, case studies, keystoe concepts, ethical criteria, practical tools, and incentives for adoption. The framework argues that a viable future requires expanding our understanding of human activity as situated within dynamic, interdependent networks of mental, social, and environmental ecologies. Care, as understood in feminist and ecological traditions, is defined as the ongoing labour of repairing and sustaining life. This viewpoint becomes the organising principle for resilience and design.
At its core, the Ecologies of Care framework provides:
- An overarching narrative that reframes sustainability and preparedness through an ethics of interdependence, situating Care as a central societal value rather than a marginal one.
- A growing knowledge bank of case studies, third-party tools, existing best practices, and methodological exemplars that demonstrate context-specific, adaptive strategies across diverse localities and sectors.
- Keystone concepts and criteria that guide assessment, decision-making, and project performance, enabling stakeholders to embed care-based resilience into their processes.
- Emerging principles of practice, such as modularity, contextual intelligence, regenerative loops, and the productive use of friction, that support distributed, anti-extractive, human-scaled interventions.
- A long-term technological vision for integrating AI, big data, and pattern-recognition tools to reveal cross-context synergies, detect systemic vulnerabilities, and enrich the evolving toolbox.
Methodologically, the project is grounded in a dual theoretical foundation: Guattari’s Three Ecologies; mental, social, environmental ecologies, and the Personal Universe Model developed by Imaginary Life AB, Sweden (Tanya Kim Grassley), which expands the notion of self to encompass intimate, personal, communal, societal, civic, architectural, infrastructural and environmental relationships. Together, these models form a matrix for mapping 81 domains of care, generating comparative insights, and structuring a research platform capable of continuous evolution.
Ecologies of Care positions itself not as a utopian alternative, but as a pragmatic and ethical response to a rapidly destabilising world. It favours situated, relational, and scalable approaches that amplify existing wisdom, while supporting new forms of cross-disciplinary collaboration. By reframing design and development as forms of ongoing, adaptive human stewardship rather than product-oriented problem solving, the framework offers pathways towards deeper resilience. An attached research proposal suggests finding diverse partners to test relationality in concepts in practice, to document findings and insights on the feasibility of the framework to help organisations navigate uncertainty and cultivate conditions for a more caring, flourishing future.
Imaginary Life AB
03.12.2024