In the context of ecosystem change and significant sociocultural, political, and institutional complexity, ecosystem managers and scientists (natural and social) need to be sensitive to processes of knowledge construction and legitimization and to the influence that explanations, or narratives, of change and complexity have on the policy process. Using the Banawa-Marawola uplands of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, as an example, this review shows how narratives of change and complexity linking the subsistence agroecological practices of upland communities, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and the policy interventions that result, emerge within several institutionalized and embedded perspectives, including (a) an entrenched political and administrative discourse on modernization and development in Indonesia, (b) a subsequent emphasis on the culturalization or civilization of upland groups considered backward or primitive, and (c) linear or equilibrium explanations of upland change linking population growth and environmental decline. As this review suggests, integrative analyses require historically sensitive frameworks that take into account the sociocultural, politicoinstitutional, and ecological dimensions of change and complexity. Such frameworks are more likely to succeed in challenging the stabilizing assumptions about the role of local people in ecosystem modification, particularly in regions where there is a long history of nature–society interaction.