TY - JOUR
T1 - How do we know about resilience? An analysis of empirical research on resilience, and implications for interdisciplinary praxis
AU - Downes, Barbara J.
AU - Miller, Fiona
AU - Barnett, Jon
AU - Glaister, Alena
AU - Ellemor, Heidi
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - We sought to understand how knowledge about resilience is produced. We examined empirical research into resilience from the social and natural sciences, randomly selected a sample of these studies and analysed their methods using common criteria to enable comparison. We found that studies of resilience from social scientists largely focus on the response of individuals to human-induced change events, while those from natural scientists largely focus on the response of ecological communities and populations to both environmental and human-induced change events. Most studies were of change over short time periods and focused on small spatial scales. Social science studies were dominated by one-off surveys, whereas natural science studies used a diversity of study designs to draw inferences about cause-and-effect. Whilst these differences typically reflect epistemological and methodological traditions, they also imply quite different understandings of resilience. We suggest that there are significant methodological barriers to producing empirical evidence about interactions between complex social and ecological systems.
AB - We sought to understand how knowledge about resilience is produced. We examined empirical research into resilience from the social and natural sciences, randomly selected a sample of these studies and analysed their methods using common criteria to enable comparison. We found that studies of resilience from social scientists largely focus on the response of individuals to human-induced change events, while those from natural scientists largely focus on the response of ecological communities and populations to both environmental and human-induced change events. Most studies were of change over short time periods and focused on small spatial scales. Social science studies were dominated by one-off surveys, whereas natural science studies used a diversity of study designs to draw inferences about cause-and-effect. Whilst these differences typically reflect epistemological and methodological traditions, they also imply quite different understandings of resilience. We suggest that there are significant methodological barriers to producing empirical evidence about interactions between complex social and ecological systems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84876192987&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014041
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84876192987
SN - 1748-9326
VL - 8
SP - 1
EP - 8
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 1
M1 - 014041
ER -