Why resilience is unappealing to social science: Theoretical and empirical investigations of the scientific use of resilience

| August 13, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Item Link: Access the Resource

File: Download

Date of Publication: May 22, 2015

Year of Publication: 2015

Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Author(s): Lennart Olsson, Anne Jerneck, Henrik Thoren, Johannes Persson, David O'Byrne

Journal: Science Advances

Volume: 1: 4

Collaborating across disciplines often proves to be a vocabulary exercise, with the struggles of deciphering jargon all too familiar. So a term like ‘resilience’ with roots in both the natural science of ecology and social science of psychology, seems like a promising interdisciplinary bridge.

But what if ‘resilience’ does not mean the same thing across disciplines?

ABSTRACT: Resilience is often promoted as a boundary concept to integrate the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. However, it is a troubled dialogue from which social scientists may feel detached. To explain this, we first scrutinize the meanings, attributes, and uses of resilience in ecology and elsewhere to construct a typology of definitions. Second, we analyze core concepts and principles in resilience theory that cause disciplinary tensions between the social and natural sciences (system ontology, system boundary, equilibria and thresholds, feedback mechanisms, self-organization, and function). Third, we provide empirical evidence of the asymmetry in the use of resilience theory in ecology and environmental sciences compared to five relevant social science disciplines. Fourth, we contrast the unification ambition in resilience theory with methodological pluralism. Throughout, we develop the argument that incommensurability and unification constrain the interdisciplinary dialogue, whereas pluralism drawing on core social scientific concepts would better facilitate integrated sustainability research.

The views and opinions expressed through the MAHB Website are those of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the MAHB. The MAHB aims to share a range of perspectives and welcomes the discussions that they prompt.