Reconceptualising foundational assumptions of resilience: A cross-cultural, spatial systems domain of relevance for agency and phenomenology in resilience. (original) (raw)
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2017
IntroductionThe concept of resilience in developmental and educational psychology rests on fundamental spatial assumptions that require further interrogation. There is firstly a spatial preunderstanding or metaphor built into conceptions of resilience as a regaining of shape, a bouncing back into shape (Ungar 2005, 2015). The important broadening of resilience by Michael Ungar and his colleagues from the individual to include systemic dimensions as part of a cross-cultural understanding typically relies on Bronfenbrenner's (1979, 1995) social-ecological systems approach which itself rests on other foundational assumptions regarding space. Ungar et al. (2007) observe "a shift in focus from individual characteristics to protective factors, and finally to health resources and assets in a child's community" that "has taken place in mostly western contexts" (p.288). Bronfenbrenner's (1979) framework assumes concentric structured spaces as nested systems of...
Sustainability, 2020
Resilience has become a popular term in spatial planning, often replacing sustainability as a reference frame. However, different concepts and understandings are embedded within it, which calls for keeping a critical stance about its widespread use. In this paper, we engage with the resilience turn in spatial planning and we dwell on the relation between resilience and sustainability from a planning perspective. Building on insights from ecology, complex system theory and epistemology, we question whether resilience can effectively act as a 'boundary object', i.e., a concept plastic enough to foster cooperation between different research fields and yet robust enough to maintain a common identity. Whilst we do not predicate a dichotomy between resilience and sustainability, we argue that the shift in the dominant understanding of resilience from a descriptive concept, to a broader conceptual and normative framework, is bound to generate some remarkable tensions. These can be associated with three central aspects in resilience thinking: (i) the unknowability and unpredictability of the future, whence a different focus of sustainability and resilience on outcomes vs. processes, respectively, ensue; (ii) the ontological separation between the internal components of a system and an external shock; (iii) the limited consideration given by resilience to inter-and intra-generational equity. Empirical evidence on actual instances of planning for resilience from different contexts seems to confirm these trends. We advocate that resilience should be used as a descriptive concept in planning within a sustainability framework, which entails a normative and transformative component that resonates with the very raison d'être of planning.
Resilience thinking has developed separately in the bodies of literature on social-ecological systems, and that published principally within developmental psychology and mental health on the resilience of individuals. This paper explores what these bodies of literature might learn from the other towards a more integrated and enriched understanding of both social-ecological systems and social resilience. The psychology-based literature recognises a strong set of factors that enhance the strengths of individuals and communities, but lacks a sophisticated integration of the physical environmental context. The social-ecological systems literature offers an excellent foundation in complex adaptive systems, but tends to superimpose ecological concepts of system function onto the human domain, and needs to include an array of core social science concepts that are important to a full understanding of social-ecological systems. An example on north eastern Australia suggests how a converged understanding of social resilience could assist managers to acknowledge, enhance and foster social resilience in linked social-ecological systems.
2020
This book explores the concept of resilience and its significance in responding to a rapid and ever-changing globalised world whilst critiquing its ‘buzzword’ status in contemporary times. Drawing on research from a range of educational settings, the book demonstrates that the resilience of individuals and their surrounding systems should not be viewed in isolation and that the interplay between individual resilience, community resilience and resilient societies is complex and symbiotic. On this basis, it illustrates that efforts to promote resilience would benefit from a systems approach capable of coping with this complexity. Using the ideas of agency and the power of self-determinism, a development of Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model is presented to illustrate the complexity of their interplay. Existing models of resilience are developed with the book offering the Dynamic Interactive Model of Resilience (DIMoR) as a way to analyse and support resilience which moves beyon...
Exploring the labyrinths of Resilience: A concept analysis
ICMXXIII 23rd International Conference on Multidisciplinary Studies: "Resilience for Survival", University of Cambridge, 30-31 July , 2020
This literature review focuses on the concept of resilience seen through an analytical lens as presenting substantial possibilities and an enormous potential mechanism for children experiencing at-risk situations. In many different contexts around the world children face every day different life circumstances and difficulties. Many of these children will experience the "resilience" phenomenon or in other terms they will develop positive adaptation despite all the difficulties and adversities that they encounter. As we are more and more confronted with significant social challenges in many fields and areas of life, also in part posed by the 21st century, the use of the expanding and flourishing knowledge on the concept of resilience could be crucial in advancing and promoting possibilities and well-being for different individuals who are identified as being in a state of risk.
Shock and place: reorienting resilience thinking
Local Environment The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability , 2020
This article employs a place-based resilience approach to support a procedural shift from a focus on specific, tangible outcomes towards a focus on processes that support wellbeing. We draw upon resident experiences of a bushfire event and a security event, later termed a terror event, and use a place-aware analysis to identify intangible yet significant patterns of disruption. A reoriented resilience approach requires innovative community initiatives that foster place-based wellbeing, which may compliment existing “emergency” response approaches without necessarily fitting within the traditional resilience policy purview.