“Constructive tensions” in resilience research: Critical reflections from a human geography perspective

Abstract

This review paper critically examines four “constructive tensions” in current resilience research, the first three of which are: its association with the roots of the resilience concept in ecological research; issues surrounding resilience as a normative or neutral concept; and confusion about the often interchangeable use of “resilience” and “sustainability” as possibly synonymous terms. The paper refers to these ambiguities as constructive tensions which have sparked fruitful discussions and debates. A fourth constructive tension is directly associated with human geography's engagement with resilience, especially by addressing the relative aspatiality of “mainstream” resilience research, by reinforcing the importance of power and agency in resilience processes, and by arguing that resilience is strongly associated with neoliberal pathways of development. The discussion highlights that much ambiguity remains surrounding some of the key concepts associated with what makes a system “resilient”. This means that philosophical, moral and epistemological differences in natural‐science‐led and social‐science‐led resilience research need to be continuously acknowledged, and that mainstream resilience researchers can greatly benefit from critical insights offered by human geographers.

Understanding process, power, and meaning in adaptive governance: a critical institutional reading

“…[2] For example, Wilson (2018), writing from a human geography perspective, points to the depoliticized nature of much resilience research and its lack of recognition of social contingency, and of the variable capacities of different actors to shape governance systems. Critiquing the "gospel of resilience," Nadasdy (2007) stresses how most management institutions and practices are embedded in unequal relations of capitalist production that make any reform of these institutions unlikely to lead to the equitable treatment of local and indigenous peoples.…”

“…However, there is a growing recognition of the potential for generating "thicker," contextualized, and power sensitive understandings of how adaptive governance works in practice. This recognition comes both from within the adaptive governance literature (Vink et al 2013, Chaffin et al 2014, Karpouzoglou et al 2016) and from aligned literature encompassing different disciplinary perspectives on environmental governance (Jones and Sok 2015, Van Hecken et al 2015, Vatn 2015, FrickTrzebitzky 2017, Wilson 2018). More broadly, there have been several contributions that deal with the relationship between resilience thinking and social theory (Adger 2000, Cote andNightingale 2012, Brown 2014).…”

Urban Resilience Discourse Analysis: Towards a Multi-Level Approach to Cities

“…The papers that create links between these two terms analyze both sustainability and resilience and their interpretation depends on the focus of studies. The fact that definitions of sustainability and resilience are predetermined by the objectives of research was described as a "constructive tension" in resilience studies [54]. Through the qualitative analysis of these papers, we The resulting graph underlines that only four terms appear linked to both resilience and sustainability: ecological modernization, disaster resilience, adoption and social ecological systems [42,44,45,53].…”

“…The papers that create links between these two terms analyze both sustainability and resilience and their interpretation depends on the focus of studies. The fact that definitions of sustainability and resilience are predetermined by the objectives of research was described as a "constructive tension" in resilience studies [54]. Through the qualitative analysis of these papers, we can reveal that papers considering adoption are mostly either about adoption of different sustainable practices, policies or systems in agriculture [55][56][57], or they address questions of implementation of different sustainability and resilience policies and standards [58].…”

A proposal for unpacking the politics of knowledge production in disaster reduction education

“…This term is useful to describe a world that is shaped in and through ruptures to “normality”. These ruptures are often unexpected and for which planning is difficult if, at times, impossible (for a recent survey of the vast literature, see Wilson, ). There is a need to address the question of “resilience for whom?” (Brown, ; Cote & Nightingale, ; Cutter, ; Lebel et al, ; Pugh, ).…”