Skip to content

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

Olsson, Lennart, Anne Jerneck, Henrik Thoren, Johannes Persson, and David O’Byrne. 2015. Why resilience is unappealing to social science: Theoretical and empirical investigations of the scientific use of resilience. Science Advances, 1 (4). el1400217

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.

You might like these publication categories

Recent publications

2023 Annual Report

We are pleased to announce the release of the Earth System Governance Project 2023 Annual Report, which highlights a year of…

Earth System Governance – Volume 22 (In Progress)

We are delighted to present the twenty-second volume of Earth System Governance, the open-access journal for all those interested in…

Earth System Governance – Volume 21

We are delighted to present the twenty-first volume of Earth System Governance, the open-access journal for all those interested in…