Explanations that account for complex causation, emergence, and social-ecological interdependence are necessary for building theories of social-ecological phenomena. Social-ecological systems (SES) research has accumulated rich empirical understanding of SES; however, integration of this knowledge toward contextualized generalizations, or middle-range theories, remains challenging. We discuss the potential of an iterative and collaborative process that combines generalizing from case studies with agent-based modelling as an abductive methodology to successively build and test explanations rooted in complexity thinking. Collaboration between empirical researchers, theoreticians, practitioners, and modellers is imperative to accommodate this process, which can be seen as a first step toward building middle-range theories.

解释复杂的因果关系，出现和社会生态相互依存关系的解释对于建立社会生态现象理论是必要的。社会生态系统（SES）研究积累了对SES的丰富经验。但是，将这些知识与上下文化的概括或中间范围的理论相集成仍然具有挑战性。我们讨论了迭代和协作过程的潜力，该过程将案例研究的概括与基于代理的建模作为一种归纳方法相结合，以相继构建和测试基于复杂性思维的解释。为了适应这一过程，经验研究人员，理论家，实践者和建模者之间的合作势在必行，这可被视为迈向建立中端理论的第一步。