The metaphorical processes in the history of the resilience notion and the rise of the ecosystem resilience theory

Hans Dieter Hellige

Chapter 3 in Handbook on Resilience of Socio-Technical Systems, 2019, pp 30-51 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: After several transfers between the disciplines of physics, applied mechanics and materials sciences, as well as physiology, psychology, biology and ecology, the centuries-old notion of resilience has developed over the past few decades into a multidisciplinary universal concept with paradigmatic aspirations. The concomitant proliferation of the term and the increasing complexity and blurriness of meaning were the grounds for a series of approaches to a phenomenology and taxonomy of the various terms and concepts pertaining to resilience. Despite the efforts of the international research group of the ‘Resilience Alliance’ for synthesis and paradigmatic closure, resiliency has remained an ambiguous borderline concept that has initiated and promoted much disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourse, but has also encountered distinct criticism with its hegemonic claim of being a ‘unifying concept’. Instead of venturing a renewed attempt to clarify and systematize concepts, the chapter chooses a historical approach to the theoretical discussion of resilience notions by reconstructing the emergence of its manifold layers of meaning. The first part focuses on metaphor and concept transfers, each of which has produced a disciplinary conceptual tradition and a culture of resilience. The second part describes the genesis of the system-theoretical ‘resilience framework’ of the biologist and ecosystem researcher C.S. Holling, which still shapes the resilience discourse to this day.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Environment; Innovations and Technology; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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