Disentangling Waterworlds: The role of ‘agential cuts’ and ‘method assemblages’ in ontological politics – an example from Loweswater, the English Lake District

A pioneering approach to environmental governance emerged from the Loweswater Care Project (LCP), which demonstrated how human and nonhuman agents collaboratively addressed toxic blue-green algae proliferation in Loweswater, a UNESCO-listed lake in the English Lake District. The LCP's intra-active collective politics, rooted in agential realism and method assemblages, revealed that scientific modeling and hydro-geomorphology surveys could serve as 'agential cuts'—structures that redefine realities and enable new forms of collective agency. These methods not only clarified land-use impacts on water quality but also reshaped the LCP's sense of shared responsibility, offering a blueprint for more balanced human-environment interactions in protected landscapes.

Tsouvalis, J. (2023). Disentangling Waterworlds: The role of ‘agential cuts’ and ‘method assemblages’ in ontological politics – an example from Loweswater, the English Lake District. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 8(1), 128–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231165441