Abstract
Few empirical studies have described social-ecological systems (SESs) in transition. Some studies focused on external drivers that impact the SES and communities' responses to adapt to changes, including economic, land and conservation policies. Others have considered the effect of social and cultural changes on communities' capacity to sustain their activities. While sociocultural changes are increasingly common through globalization and world-wide economic development, there is an urgent need to better understand and document how these changes affect individual and community agency to adapt or transform a system that is facing a combination of powerful internal and external forces. The human–Asian elephant relationship appears particularly illustrative of a complex SES because of the dual status of the elephant being wild or under human care, and the entanglement of ecological, cultural, social and economic dimensions. The ongoing and rapid political, socio-economic and environmental changes occurring in Laos for the last decades have strongly affected this relationship.