Is conceptual vagueness an asset? Resilience research from the perspective of philosophy of science

Sebastian Strunz ()
Additional contact information
Sebastian Strunz: Sustainability Economics Group, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany

No 205, Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics

Abstract: I analyze the research on social-ecological resilience from the perspective of philosophy of science in three steps. First, I explore to what degree resilience research exhibits conceptual vagueness. I find a wide spectrum of research, ranging from approaches relying on a concise conceptual framework to the perspective of “resilience thinking”, which builds on a cluster of vague concepts. Second, I set out the methodological arguments in favor and against conceptual vagueness. Merging both strands of reasoning in the third step, I conclude that a trade-off between vagueness and precision exists, which is to be solved differently depending on the context of resilience research. In some contexts, resilience research benefits from conceptual vagueness while in others it depends on precision. Specifically, I argue that in “resilience thinking” the trade-off might be enhanced by a coherent restructuring of the conceptual framework.

Keywords: vagueness; philosophy of science; precision; resilience thinking; socialecological systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B40 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.leuphana.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Fors ... df/wp_205_Upload.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (https://www.leuphana.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Forschungseinrichtungen/ifvwl/WorkingPapers/lue/pdf/wp_205_Upload.pdf [303 See Other]--> https://www.leuphana.de/fileadmin/user_upload/forschungseinrichtungen/ifvwl/workingpapers/lue/pdf/wp_205_upload.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lue:wpaper:205

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Wagner ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).