Analysis of Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: A Review

This report offers a comprehensive literature review on the concept of resilience within social-ecological systems. It begins by tracing the origins of the resilience perspective, highlighting its roots in ecology and its challenge to the traditional stable equilibrium view. The review explores the evolution of resilience, emphasizing non-linear dynamics, thresholds, uncertainty, and the interplay between gradual and rapid changes across temporal and spatial scales. It discusses the shift from empirical observations and mathematical models to the adaptive management approach and the increasing integration of the social dimension in resilience studies. The analysis includes discussions on panarchy, adaptive renewal cycles, and the role of resilience in understanding and managing ecosystem changes. The study highlights that resilience has long been considered in the study of social-ecological systems as a phenomenon, and with the inclusion of social systems, researchers are compelled to consider it as a distinct approach. The report emphasizes the importance of resilience as a crucial framework for understanding and addressing complex social-ecological challenges, supported by various scholarly research and conceptual frameworks.

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
LITERATURE REVIEW
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses
Carl Folke (2006)
The present research article discusses the theme of resilience in the context of social-
ecological systems. The broader scope of the research addresses the dynamics of ecology
and sustainability. It narrows down to further identify the impact of resilience approach in
the field of ecological research. The author comments that the study of resilience was
majorly dominated by empirical observations redesigned with mathematic model.
However, the current trend is trying to include the social dimension into the context.
The study majorly follows an explorative design to explore the emergence of
resilience perspective and the context of its development. Next, it analyses resilience and
system dynamics with regard to adaptive systems such as panarchy and Holling’s
adaptive renewal cycle (Holling, 1986). These models explains the essential nature of
resilience approach by taking cross-scale interactions, fast/slow dynamics and
interdependencies of ecological components into account. Through this analysis of the
capacity of disturbance absorption, self-organisation and retention of stability, as well as
drawing the analogy of social resilience, the author tries to establish resilience as a
perspective or approach.
Further, the author takes support from a number of scholarly research to strengthen
the fundamental claim of the study, i.e. the establishment of resilience study as a distinct
and systematic approach to explore social-ecological systems. It provides an overview of
different conceptual frameworks that eventually propounds resilience as an academic
perspective.
It is understood from the analysis and exploration presented in the research that
resilience has long been considered in the study of social-ecological systems as a
phenomenon. However, emergence of novel empirical aspects and inclusion of social

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LITERATURE REVIEW
systems is compelling researchers to revise the concept of resilience and consider it as
distinct approach (Folke et al., 2016).
Reference
Folke, C., Biggs, R., Norstrom, A. V., Reyers, B., & Rockstrom, J. (2016). Social-ecological
resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science.