Chapter 08 · Finance, data & evidenceSustainability Language
Assemblage thinking
Definition
An analytical approach originating in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's *A Thousand Plateaus* (1980) and developed by Manuel DeLanda and others, which treats social entities — cities, markets, institutions, socio-ecological systems — as "assemblages": contingent wholes whose heterogeneous components can be detached, replaced and recombined, and whose properties emerge from relations rather than essences.
References
Origin in Deleuze and Guattari (1980); development by Latour and DeLanda; agencement translation issue; applications in social science.
Overview
What it means
The English term translates the French *agencement*, which carries senses of arrangement and agency that "assemblage" only partly captures. Applied in sustainability and transition studies, assemblage thinking directs attention to how technologies, infrastructures, policies, people and ecosystems are contingently stitched together — and therefore how they might be reconfigured.
How it is used
Researchers use the approach to study energy transitions, urban sustainability, conservation projects and supply chains as assemblages, highlighting emergence, fluidity and the role of non-human elements. It offers an alternative to system metaphors with fixed boundaries.
Why it matters
The approach underpins a strand of critical sustainability scholarship: if socio-ecological arrangements are assemblages rather than fixed structures, transformation means disassembling and reassembling relations — a useful frame for thinking about systemic change, though critics find it vague for practical decision-making.