ABSTRACT. We explored why social-ecological memory (SEM) is a source of inertia and path dependence, as well as a source of renewal and reorganization in social-ecological systems (SESs). We have presented two case studies: the historical case of the Norse settlement on Greenland and an empirical case from contemporary southern Madagascar. The cases illustrate how SEM is linked to specific pathways of development and a particular set of natural resource management practices. We have shown that in each case, a broader diversity of SEM is present in the SESs, but not drawn upon. Instead, SEMs are part of what explains community coherence and the barriers to adoption of more diverse practices. We have elaborated on how specific SEMs are linked to specified resilience, and we have shown that this fits existing notions of resilience, robustness, inertia, and path dependence. We have proposed that to change the dynamics of development pathways that do not produce desired results, it is necessary for managers to shift from specific to general SEM, which would also mirror the shift from specified to general resilience. The challenge lies in the interplay between the specified and the general. In this critical work, it is important to recognize that the valued diversity of SEM necessary for general resilience might actually reside in a different community.

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This article discusses recent developments among strands of earth systems science as providers of knowledge and advice in emerging global environmental politics from the vantage point of the screenplay Avatar. The field 'resilience thinking', emerging as part of systems ecology in the 1970s, pioneered propositions about the critical role of local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge to understand and manage human-nature relations. In more recent years there have been attempts to address sustainability beyond the local in 'extended resilience enterprise' including ideas of 'social-ecological systems' and 'planetary boundaries'. However, the leap to argue the case of resilience at larger, even planetary scales ran the risk of rendering the diversity of local cultures and knowledge traditions invisible by devising an epistemic space that privileged conventional Western knowledge. Using insights from the scientist Dr. Augustine in the screenplay Avatar, it is possible to discuss historical and current authority claims in local and planetary science policy. While there are good reasons to apply resilience beyond the 'local', this could be done in many ways. We © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012, Unit S3, Keliiam House, 3, Lancaster Street, Sheffield S3 8AP. • 152Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture contend that the potential virtues of involving resilience thinking with global environmental policies would be better realized if this also meant developing a careful understanding of its moral and epistemological aspects. This understanding need not only cohere with current ecological understandings of the world as living and complex, but also with humanistic recognition of the human stature as many-fold and situated.