TY - JOUR

T1 - Capacities for resilience

T2 - persisting, adapting and transforming through bricolage

AU - Haider, L. Jamila

AU - Cleaver, Frances

PY - 2023/12/31

Y1 - 2023/12/31

N2 - Resilience has become increasingly popular in sustainability research and practice as a way to describe change. Within this discourse, the notion of resilience as the capacity of people, practices and processes, to persist, adapt or transform is particularly salient. The ability to bounce back from shock (persistence) or to take adaptive measures to cope with change are most commonly attributed to resilience, but at the same time, there is a strong push for a transformation agenda from various social and environmental movements. How capacities for resilience are enacted and performed through social practices remains relatively underexplored and there is potential for more dialogue and learning across disciplinary traditions. In this article, we outline the ‘Resilience Capacities Framework’ as a way to a) explicitly address questions of agency in how resilience capacities are enacted and b) account for the dynamic interactions between pathways of persistence, adaptation and transformation. Our starting point is to conceptualise future pathways as co-evolved, whereby social and ecological relationships are shaped through processes of selection, variation and retention, enacted in everyday practices. Drawing on theories of bricolage and structuration, we elaborate on the role of actors as bricoleurs, consciously and non-consciously shaping socio-ecological relationships and pathways of change. Informed by cases of rural change from mountain areas, we explore the extent to which an approach focusing on agency and bricolage can illuminate how the enactment of resilience capacities shapes intersecting pathways of change.

AB - Resilience has become increasingly popular in sustainability research and practice as a way to describe change. Within this discourse, the notion of resilience as the capacity of people, practices and processes, to persist, adapt or transform is particularly salient. The ability to bounce back from shock (persistence) or to take adaptive measures to cope with change are most commonly attributed to resilience, but at the same time, there is a strong push for a transformation agenda from various social and environmental movements. How capacities for resilience are enacted and performed through social practices remains relatively underexplored and there is potential for more dialogue and learning across disciplinary traditions. In this article, we outline the ‘Resilience Capacities Framework’ as a way to a) explicitly address questions of agency in how resilience capacities are enacted and b) account for the dynamic interactions between pathways of persistence, adaptation and transformation. Our starting point is to conceptualise future pathways as co-evolved, whereby social and ecological relationships are shaped through processes of selection, variation and retention, enacted in everyday practices. Drawing on theories of bricolage and structuration, we elaborate on the role of actors as bricoleurs, consciously and non-consciously shaping socio-ecological relationships and pathways of change. Informed by cases of rural change from mountain areas, we explore the extent to which an approach focusing on agency and bricolage can illuminate how the enactment of resilience capacities shapes intersecting pathways of change.

KW - Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

KW - Nature and Landscape Conservation

KW - Automotive Engineering

KW - Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

KW - Ecology

U2 - 10.1080/26395916.2023.2240434

DO - 10.1080/26395916.2023.2240434

M3 - Journal article

VL - 19

JO - Ecosystems and People

JF - Ecosystems and People

SN - 2639-5908

IS - 1

M1 - 2240434

ER -