I was intrigued by your answer on the overarching argument and also think it is important to name politics and also take a more radical stance at times. When and how to make an argument more critical or strong (e.g. through strategic essentialism) is something I have been thinking a lot in my projects. Should I e.g. refer to Big Data projects as 'not working', because in many instances they fail? Does it make that much sense to interrogate the accuracy frame when with these technologies it is often more about the politics they reproduce? When does it make sense to use emic or established terms and when are new ones more appropriate? How do you get detailed "enough" to make stronger or overarching claims while manging the risk of not beeing taking serious? I think audiences matter a lot here as well, e.g. when you know people with technnology background are reading your work, writing and argumentation strategies also change, and how and in what ways e.g. such more over-arching arguments can be made. Also positionality is important, if your are a famous scholar you can make bigger claims while being taking serious, but as a more junior person I think this can be much harder. Beyound being taking serious, there is also this risk of overimposing through too overarching or grand theories. I think these questions and tensions are also part of dealing with this boundry between academia and activism.
will become easier to parse for different contexts over time, also positionality matters a lot
I found it interesting that the first graph seems RISI is sort of part of the almost "closed system" whereas in the second graph it is more of an externalities with a uni-directional relation. Without any backround, these grand theory diagrams are really hard for me to understand. In the 2nd one I am very unsure sure about these relations, like why is there no (direct) relation between fungi and plants (in the first diagram there is)? It seems like the 1st and 2nd want to describe different mechanisms? What do the relaitons and numbers mean? What is RISE and SINK? Humans are also much more central in the 2nd graph as they have very many relations. Also Energy conservation and information appear central to me. The first one is I think centered more on Plants and Production. I think the graphs also frame "Energy Source" sort of as the infrastructure which powers everything else, as the graphs seem to be for me about flows from energy source to the "SINK" and "RISE". If I did not miscalculate, then what comes in throug through the "Energy Source" equals to what comes out of the "SINK". In turn I wonder where and what the values that go into "RISE" represent? I feel like this graph almost confuses me more then it clarifies without context and carries very many assumptions. It caught my eye I think also because of its broad claims and almost panotic all-seeing gaze onto the biosphere.