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Meeting the ‘Anthropocene’ inthe context of intractability andcomplexity: infusing resiliencenarratives with intersubjectivityNeil Scott Powellab, Rasmus Kløcker Larsenc & Severine vanBommelda Sustainability Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast,Queensland, Australiab Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, UppsalaUniversity, Uppsala, Swedenc Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Swedend Communication Studies Group, Wageningen University,Wageningen, The NetherlandsPublished online: 26 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Neil Scott Powell, Rasmus Kløcker Larsen & Severine van Bommel (2014):Meeting the ‘Anthropocene’ in the context of intractability and complexity: infusing resiliencenarratives with intersubjectivity, Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, DOI:10.1080/21693293.2014.948324

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Meeting the ‘Anthropocene’ in the context of intractability andcomplexity: infusing resilience narratives with intersubjectivity

Neil Scott Powella,b*, Rasmus Kløcker Larsenc and Severine van Bommeld

aSustainability Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia;bUppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;cStockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; dCommunication Studies Group,

Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Insufficient attention has been paid to how concepts of resilience can be operationalisedin wicked, contested situations. Within the environmental sciences, the contemporarysocial-ecological resilience narrative is not geared to examining social dilemmas in ill-defined problem contexts. These conditions require a different resilience narrative, onecentred on epistemological and ontological considerations. This paper examines fourresilience narratives (engineering, social-ecological, epistemic and intersubjective) inorder to stimulate an improved awareness of the possibility of more deliberativechoices for research and governance in the resilience domain. We argue that theresilience research community needs to be more cognizant of the diversity of resiliencenarratives in order to empower and learn from the perspectives and local practices ofstakeholders, who will often express narratives better aligned to the wicked situation athand. Ultimately, the resilience narratives of the research community can be little morethan toolkits to support greater understanding of the diversity of people, perspectivesand ‘performances’ jointly narrating the ‘real’ stories of our wicked and contestedrealities.

Keywords: wicked problems; epistemology; ontology; resilience

Introduction

Within the environmental sciences, the contemporary social-ecological resilience

narrative aims to offer ways to transcend techno-centric and centralised equilibrium-

based management approaches. This narrative, with its definition of resilience as the

ability of a system to absorb shocks, avoid crossing a threshold into alternative and

possibly irreversible new states, and regenerate after disturbance,1 has been largely

subsumed by the discourse of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, in turn, articulates a

systemically compelling picture of an earth system that has flipped from a regime

governed by natural drivers to one governed by human agency.2 This picture has been

imbued by narratives from science, in particular the ‘Planetary Boundaries’ narrative in

which epistemological claims are made about the role of scientific knowledge.3 One such

claim suggests that science can identify the relevant (biogeochemical) systems and set

boundaries for them. Ten earth system processes are identified that define the so-called

operating space for humanity, eight of which have been quantified. A second claim that

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

*Corresponding author. Email: neil.powell@csduppsala.uu.se

1 Resilience Alliance, Assessing and Managing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems:A Practitioner’s Workbook, version 1 (online), October 15, 2009. http://resalliance.org/index.php/resilience_assessment2 P.J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415, no. 7263 (2002): 23.3 J. Rockstrom et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461, no. 6867 (2009): 472–5.

Resilience, 2014

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underlies this narrative posits that there is an ideal state for these bounded biogeochemical

systems. This state has been quantified as thresholds that should not be transgressed.

A third claim is that scientific knowledge is able to determine how humanity can achieve

these states to ensure we stay within a safe operating space. Motivated by these claims,

researchers and some international science-policy initiatives have started to explore the

implications for policy and institutional arrangements.4 Driven by the same discourse, the

International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP)

recently established the Earth Systems Governance Program with a mandate to take up the

challenge of exploring political solutions and novel, more effective, ‘earth system

governance’ arrangements to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical

systems of our planet.5

However, the planetary boundaries concept is associated with considerable

controversy and questions about its rigour as a guiding star in addressing the wicked

problems that underpin environmental governance.6 This was recently observed in the

unfolding dilemma associated with the negotiation process on the new Sustainability

Development Goals (SDGs), which are expected to be implemented from 2015. Griggs

et al.,7 among others, argue that planetary stability must be integrated with humanity’s

need for poverty alleviation and human well-being. In this case, the challenges associated

with the formulation and future implementation of the SDGs can be considered fraught

with emergent conflicts of interest between the development agenda of the future SDGs

and the objectivist environmental goals linked to planetary boundaries. Devoid of these

considerations, the current Anthropocene discourse is likely to exacerbate existing

inequities in society, and moreover between the global North and South. Indeed, Joseph8

has argued that the recent enthusiasm for the concept of resilience is, at least in part, a

consequence of its fit with neoliberal governmentality, which does not threaten the

current distribution of privileges and entitlements. Moreover, further contestation comes

from the scientific disciplines that are closely aligned to the subject areas that underpin

the respective planetary boundaries. Here, some disciplinary scientists are critical of the

quality of the data and quantitative models used to ‘geo-reference’ human existence

within the different boundaries.9 A more fundamental source of contestation – and

indeed the subject area more pertinent to this article – is specifically the notion of a

desirable state. In this regard, some social scientists and practitioners have started to

question the epistemic and ontological assumptions underpinning the planetary

boundaries narrative.10

The contemporary resilience narrative’s embrace of theories of complex systems,

ecological self-organisation and distributed participation in knowledge production and

4V. Galaz et al., “Global Environmental Governance and Planetary Boundaries: An Introduction,”Ecological Economics 81 (2012): 1–3. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.02.035 F. Biermann et al., “Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance,” Science335, no. 6074 (2012): 1306–7.6 Here a wicked problem is characterised by a situation when different stakeholders disagree overwhat constitutes the problem.7 D. Griggs et al., “Policy: Sustainable Development Goals for People and Planet,” Nature 495, no.7441 (2013): 305–7.8 J. Joseph, “Resilience as Embedded Neoliberalism: A Governmentality Approach,” Resilience:International Policies, Practices and Discourses 1, no. 1 (2013): 38–52.9 See, for example, L.M. Persson et al., “Confronting Unknown Planetary Boundary Threats fromChemical Pollution,” Environmental Science Technology 47, no. 22 (2013): 12619–22.10 See, for example, the review in B. Nykvist et al., National Environmental Performance onPlanetary Boundaries, Report 6576 (Stockholm: Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2013).

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decision-making aims to promote interdisciplinarity and cross-sectoral approaches.11

However, the persistence of expert-defined boundaries to circumscribe desirable systems

lends itself to target-orientated governance instruments that often reject the understanding

of iteratively negotiated norms as inherent in any governance process that aims to address

wicked issues. As is elaborated further below, intrinsic to the act of ascribing a fixed

boundary is the stabilising of existing institutional structures at the cost of co-deliberation

and learning.12 Planetary boundaries and their expert-defined system targets are also

closely aligned to the needs of different sectors and/or the ‘toolkits’ of scientific

communities. Paradoxically, therefore, the resilience narrative and discourses on the

Anthropocene run the risk of conserving the traditional sectoral and hierarchical

governance structures that they themselves partially espouse a revolt against.13 The fixing

of boundaries can serve as convenient ammunition for policy owners to reproduce norms

and maintain sectorial boundaries as the organising principles for the contemporary policy

landscape. Hence, while the social-ecological resilience narrative is critical of top-down

and bureaucratic structures, insufficient attention is paid to the processes by which norms

and institutions are (re)created or serve to maintain the status quo and reproduce norms

that sustain dominant structures.

Departing from this recognition, this article offers a theoretical critique of the

dominant social-ecological resilience narrative and a reading of a diverse set of resilience

narratives that may be adopted to make intelligible the interrelationships between humans

and the material. We argue that insufficient attention has been paid to how concepts of

resilience can be operationalised in wicked, contested situations. The central argument is

that the contemporary social-ecological resilience narrative is not geared to examining

social dilemmas in ill-defined problem contexts and that such conditions require the

adoption of a different resilience narrative centred on epistemological and ontological

considerations. It is further argued that, beyond the scientific realm, and within local

contexts, there are a plethora of legitimate perspectives on global environmental change

processes held by stakeholders. Rather than relying on reified scientific narratives,

research should work to empower these perspectives and practices. In so doing, we are not

advocating for any specific resilience narrative, but for the fostering of the coexistence of

multiple narratives in order to improve research and governance performance in uncertain

and wicked situations wherein all scientific and policy-oriented resilience narratives will

ultimately shatter and be reconstituted through local practice and agency.

Alternative resilience narratives to make sense of wicked and contested landscapes

We, as human beings, are meaning-making agents that rely on a host of conscious and

unconscious sense-making devices tomake ourworld and our actions intelligible. The act of

sense-making is intrinsic to any other act, and narratives play a crucial role – as scientists,

11 C. Folke, “Resilience: The Emergence of a Perspective for Social-Ecological Systems Analysis,”Global Environmental Change 16, no.3 (2006): 253–67; F. Berkes and C. Folke, eds., Linking Socialand Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); F. Miller et al., “Resilience and Vulnerability:Complementary or Conflicting Concepts?” Ecology and Society 15, no. 3 (2010): 11.12 See G. Midgley, Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology and Practice (New York:Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2000).13 See D.R. Nelson, W.N. Adger, and K. Brown, “Adaptation to Environmental Change:Contributions of a Resilience Framework,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 32, no. 1(2007): 395–419; B.H. Walker et al., eds., Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems:Comparative Studies and Theory Development (Collingwood: CSIRO, 2006).

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managers, policy-makers, artists, citizens and so on – in organising complex insights and

experiences elicited over time and space.14 This section outlines four archetypical

narratives within the sense-making traditions of resilience theory – and to some extent

practice. We do not claim the existence of distinct traditions or clearly bounded sense-

making perspectives, merely some emerging patterns of meaning-making. These narratives

find various expressions in the scientific bodies of work cited, linked to multiple sources of

theory – some of which may not be specifically coined in a resilience tradition.

First, we introduce the ‘engineering narrative’, which is found in conventional natural

resource management (see Figure 1A). Here, each discrete sector tries to optimise the state

of its resources. Second, we outline the ‘social-ecological systems narrative’, in which

Figure 1. Diagrammatic representation of the sense-making perspectives of four resiliencenarratives. (A) Reductionist (analysis of components), found in the engineering resilience narrative.(B) Expert system (‘hard’ boundaries defining reference system), found in the social-ecologicalresilience narrative. (C) Interactionist (state-holders’ systems of interest), found in the epistemicresilience narrative, (D) found in the intersubjective resilience narrative.

14 See M. Leach, A. Stirling, and I. Scoones, Dynamic Sustainabilities (London: Earthscan, 2010).

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problem contexts are viewed as a knowable commons such as a basin, catchment or

ecosystem (see Figure 1B). Third, in the ‘epistemic resilience’ narrative, we depict a view

of ‘state-holder’ defined systems of interest, in which a stakeholder-defined system is

demarcated by its purpose, which, in turn, is orchestrated through the configuration of a

peculiar set of biophysical and social components (see Figure 1C). Fourth, we discuss the

emergence of the ‘intersubjective resilience’ narrative, which views the problem context

as enacted through the multiple performances of non-coherent realities. This section builds

and elaborates on insights from previous efforts to crystallise a more reflexive overview of

resilience narratives (see Table 1 for an overview of the concepts and theory embodied in

the 4 resilience narratives described below).15

Narrative 1: engineering resilience

The ontological rationale arising from the engineering resilience narrative sees closed and

equilibrium systems as desirable. Both the first and second laws of thermodynamics are

interpreted as substantiating this worldview. The first law of thermodynamics describes a

thermal system with increased energy input as moving from a state of disorder to a state of

order/equilibrium. The second law, presented by Carnot in 1890,16 describes how a closed

system behaves under increasing thermal pressure. In contrast to the first law, a system is

seen to move from order (equilibrium) to increasing entropy. Here, thermal energy is

dissipated, leading to a gradual erosion of the system.

This equilibrium-based rationale can also be traced back to meta-theories from the

biological sciences, which have been instrumental in managing biological systems to date.

Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species reflects a world moving from disorder to

order through ever increasingly complex processes of evolution.17 In ecology, from a

Clementsian worldview, there is a single optimal state (at equilibrium) for an ecological

system – its so-called climax. Should a system deviate too far from climax, it is considered

degradedandwill require a significantperiodof ‘succession’ for it to return this optimal state.18

This worldview also found expression in the Malthusian and Adamsonian roots of

resource economics, inspiring managerial regimes with a reliance on measures of

exhaustibility, carrying capacity and maximum sustainable yield.19 Some ecologists have

criticised these metrics, but retained the equilibrium and reductionist view in a definition

of ecological carrying capacity as that point where neither the integrity of the respective

resource nor the ecological system in which it is nested are compromised.20 Hence,

inherent in the narrative across all the disciplines involved is an assessment of a system’s

integrity based on the notion of a single stability domain or equilibrium.

15 See, for example, N. Powell, “Re-conceptualising Resilience for Impact Assessment in Conditionsof Systemic Uncertainty,” in Environmental Assessment in the Nordic Countries: Experience andProspects, vol. 3, ed. H. Bjarnadottir (Stockholm: Nordregio, 2000), 163–73; N. Powell and R.K.Larsen, “Integrated Water Resource Management: A Platform for Higher Education Institutions toMeet Complex Sustainability Challenges,” Environmental Education Research 19, no. 4 (2012):458–76.16 S. Carnot, Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat and on Machines (New York: Wiley, 1890).17 C. Darwin, The Origin of Species (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).18 F. Clements, Plant Succession: An Analysis of Vegetation (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute,1916).19 D.W. Pearce and R.K. Turner, Economics of Natural Resources and Environment (Exeter:Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996).20 J.M. Baland and J.P. Platteau, Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There a Role forLocal Communities? (Oxford: FAO/Claredon Press, 1996).

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Table

1.

Conceptsandtheory

embodiedin

thefourresilience

narratives.

Engineeringresilience

Socio-ecological

resilience

Epistemic

resilience

Intersubjectiveresilience

What

isthe

underlying

Epistemology?

PositivistRealist,“norm

alscience”

PositivistRealist,“norm

alscience”

Social

Constructivism,post-

norm

alscience

21

Epistemologyandontology

collapse

into

theinter-

subjective

What

isthe

underpinning

legacyofthe

narrative?

Physicalsciencesandeconomics;

firstlaw

ofthermodynam

icsto

conventional

notionsof

sustainability22

EcologyandBiological

Sciences

ComplexSystem

s,Action

Research,SoftSystem

sMethodologies,Innovation

Science

23

Pragmatism,interpretive

analysis,dialogical

existentialism,social

anthropology,non-W

estern

philosophies

What

isthe

considered

‘Desirable

State’?

Efficient,constantandpredictable

Persistent,change,

unpredictable

Flexibility,plasticity,

negotiable24

Situationally

emergent,

relational,diverse

What

isthe

Resilience

Definition?

Stabilityat

ornearan

equilibrium

steadystate2

5Conditionsfarfrom

any

equilibrium

state,where

instabilitiescanflip

thesystem

into

another

state2

6

Institutionally

defined

system

swhichhavean

inherently

“unstable

state”

27

Conditionsthat

allow

forco-

existingpractices

and

perform

ances2

8

How

is‘resilience’

measured?

Resistance

todisturbance

quantified

byrate

ofreturn

toequilibrium

Abilityofasystem

toabsorb

shocks,avoid

crossingathreshold

into

analternateandpossibly

irreversible

new

states,andto

regenerateafterdisturbance

29

Capacityto

generatescenarios

andoptions3

0Capacityto

retain

subject

subject

relations,including

human

andnon-human

subjects3

1

How

aresystem

properties

perceived?

Closed,fixed

boundaries,linearand

causalrelationships

Open

system

,non-equilibrium,

episodic32,tippingpointsand

thresholds3

3boundaries(habitats,

basins,administrativeunits)

SoftSystem

s,34Stakeholder/

purpose

defined

system

s,contested

boundaries,resource

dilem

mas,andwicked

problems3

5

Tem

poral,spatial,fluid,

multiple

andlocal36

What

proxies

areusedfor

resilience?

Market

equilibrium,Paretooptimal,

steadystate,successiontheory,

Maxim

um

Sustainable

Yield,

CarryingCapacity

AdaptiveCapacity,ecological

ecological

self-organisation,

diversity

Collectiveaction,Adaptive

Capacity,multi-functional

Heterogeneousdiscourses,

practices,andperform

ances.

N.S. Powell et al.6

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What

future

outlooksare

considered

desirable?

System

sin

dis-climax

andclim

axSystem

saremovingtargets,with

multiplefuturesthat

areuncertain

andunpredictable37

Coherence

andcorrespondence

within

andbetweensocialandbio

physicalsystem

s38

Co-existence

ofnon-coherent,

practices

andrealities3

9

What

arethe

preferred

Governance

configurations?

CommandandControl:Rulesand

Regulations,FiscalPolicy,advocacy,

Logical

fram

eworks

AdaptiveManagem

ent,Adaptive

Governance

40

Social

Learningandstakeholder

processes

41

Variable,dependentonthe

perform

ancesofnon-coherent

realitiesenactedin

local

practices

21N.RolingandA.Wagem

akers,

A.,eds.,FacilitatingSustainable

Agriculture:Participatory

LearningandAdaptive

Managem

entin

Times

ofEnvironmentalUncertainty

(Cam

bridge:

Cam

bridgeUniversity

Press,1998);S.O.FuntowiczandJ.R.Ravetz,“Science

forthePost-N

orm

alAge,”Futures25,no.7(1993):739–55.

22BalandandPlatteau,HaltingDegradationofNaturalResources.

23R.IsonandD.Rusell,AgriculturalExtensionandRuralDevelopment:BreakingOutoftheTraditions(Cam

bridge:

Cam

bridgeUniversity

Press,2000).

24N.PowellandJ.Jiggins,“Participatory

LandandSocialAssessm

ent,”in

InternationalHandbookofSocialIm

pactAssessm

ent:ConceptualandMethodologicalAdvances,ed.H.A.

Becker

andF.Vanclay

(Cheltenham

:EdwardElgar,2003).

25R.V.O’N

eillet

al.,

AHierarchicalConceptofEcosystem

s(Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversity

Press,1986).

26C.S.Holling,“R

esilience

andStabilityofEcological

System

s,”AnnualReviewofEcologyandSystematics

4(1973):1–23.

27Ibid;W.N.Adger,“Social

andEcologicalResilience:Are

They

Related?,”Progress

inHumanGeography24,no.3(2000):347–64;andE.Becker,Social-ecologicalSystemsas

Epistemic

Objects(FrankfurtMain:Institute

forSocial-Ecological

Research,2010).

28W.James,Pragmatism

:ANew

NameforSomeOld

Ways

ofThinking(LaVergne,TN:Filiquarian,2010).

29Resilience

Alliance,AssessingandManagingResilience

inSocial-EcologicalSystems.

30J.JigginsandN.Roling,“A

daptiveManagem

ent:PotentialandLim

itationsforEcologicalGovernance,”InternationalJournalofAgriculturalResources,Governance

andEcology

1,no.1(2000):28–42;PowellandJiggins,“Participatory

LandandSocial

Assessm

ent.”

31M.Buber,BetweenManandMan(N

ewYork:Routledge,2002),7.

32C.S.Holling,1996.EngineeringvsEcological

Resilience.in

EngineeringwithEcologicalConstraints,ed.Schultz.P.(N

ational

Academ

yofEngineering,1996),31–44.

33Rockstrom

etal.,“A

SafeOperatingSpaceforHumanity.”;C.S.Holling,“R

esilience

andStabilityofEcological

System

s,”AnnualReviewofEcologyandSystematics

4(1973):

1–23.

34J.Wiley,P.Subjects-ChecklandandJ.Scholes,eds.,SoftSystemsMethodologyin

Action(W

estSussex,UK:JohnWiley

&SonsLtd,1999).

35PowellandLarsen,“IntegratedWater

ResourceManagem

ent.”

36J.Law

,“M

akingaMesswithMethod,”inTheSageHandbookofSocialScience

Methodology,ed.W

illiam

OuthwaiteandStephen

P.Turner(London:Sage,2007),595–606;andJ.

Law

,“O

nSociologyandSTS,”TheSociologicalReview56,no.4(2008):623–49.

37C.Walters,Adaptive

Managem

entofRenew

able

Resources

(New

York:MacMillan,1986).

38N.Roling,Gatewayto

theGlobalGarden:Beta/gammaScience

forDealingwithEcologicalRationality,Eighth

Annual

Hopper

lecture,24October

2000(U

niversity

ofGuelph,

Canada).

39J.Law

etal.,“M

odes

ofSyncretism:NotesonNon-coherence”(CRESCworkingpaper

119,2013),12.

40Berkes

andFolke,eds.,LinkingSocialandEcologicalSystems.

41JigginsandRoling,“A

daptiveManagem

ent.”

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These representations of a desirable system have been drawn on in conceptualising

how institutions should be devised to maintain equilibrium. The antithesis of this

institutional response is management situations that are perceived to be totally devoid of

control. Hardin’s42 controversial essay on the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, which is

discussed further below, depicts just such a situation. He applied assumptions about

human behaviour, individualism and rational choice to understand how ‘open access’ to

common resources inevitably leads to irreversibility. Using game theory, in particular

the theory centred on the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, common property theorists argued that the

transaction costs of upholding rules and agreements of individuals in commons exceed the

benefits of non-compliance.43 As a resource management response to maintaining

equilibrium, enforcement through external institutional arrangements, private and state

property regimes, is therefore generally advocated.44

In accordance with this narrative, the rate at which a system returns to equilibrium is

taken as the central measure of its resilience. Engineering resilience has thus prompted

policy measures designed to maintain order and equilibrium in different contexts, such as

forests, marine ecosystems, rivers and agricultural lands. The operationalisation of such a

narrative can be seen, for example, in the way structural measures such as drainage

systems, dams and dykes are ‘engineered’ to protect cities, sewerage treatment plants,

valuable fish farming operations or farmlands prone to leaching from water inundations

attributed to floods and storm surges.45

Narrative 2: social-ecological resilience

Based on a significant bank of lessons from the implementation and management of

measures inspired by the engineering resilience narrative, a growing body of cases has

demonstrated that equilibrium-centred models generate a misinterpretation of complex

systems.46 This view concurs with what is often referred to as the third law of

thermodynamics, or the notion of dissipative structures.47 Prigogine showed that the

importation or dissipation of energy into thermodynamic systems that were ‘far from

equilibrium’ could reverse the increasing entropy rule imposed by the second law.

This inspired the general system theory that open systems and their inherent leakiness

(dissipation) could be perceived as a desirable system property, a source of renewal and a

precondition for ecological self-organisation of the system. Empirically, this thesis has

42G. Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243–48.43 C.F. Runge, “Common Property Externalities: Isolation, Assurance and Resource Depletion in aTraditional Razing Context,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 63, no. 4 (1981): 595–606.44 Runge, “Common Property Externalities”; H. Demetz, “Towards a Theory of Property Rights,”American Economic Review 57, no. 2 (1967): 347–59; A.K. Sen, “Isolation, Assurance and theSocial Rate of Discount,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 81, no. 1 (1976): 112–24.45Miller et al., “Resilience and Vulnerability”; W. Mioduszewski, eds., Role of Water Managementin Protection of Water Quality in Rural Areas (Wydawnictwo: ITP, 2012).46 R.H. Behnke and I. Scoones, “Rethinking Range Ecology: Implications for RangelandsManagement in Africa,” in Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New Models for Natural Variabilityand Pastoral Adaptation in African Savannas, ed. R.H. Benhke, I. Scoones, and C. Kerven (London:Overseas Development Institute, 1993), 1–30; Berkes and Folke, Linking Social and EcologicalSystems; and C.S. Holling, “Simplifying the Complex: the Paradigms of Ecological Function andStructure,” European Journal of Operational Research 30, no. 2 (1987): 139–46.47 I. Prigogine, “Thermodynamics in Evolution,” Physics Today 23, no. 12 (1972): 38–44.

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been informed by the abrupt changes that characterise rangelands systems, fish

populations in marine systems and indeed forests affected by fire regimes.48

What was initially predominantly an ‘ecological resilience narrative’ was later applied

to the dynamics of economic systems by Constanza et al.49 and Berkes et al.,50 substituting

ecological concepts with economic concepts. For example, climax ecosystems have been

substituted by mature bureaucracies, disturbance has been substituted by creative

destruction and the processes suggested by fire and flood have been substituted by political

upheaval. Criticism emerged from some political ecologists that social-ecological

resilience research had begun to ‘colonise’ the domain of the social by applying a lens with

its origins in the natural sciences.51 Nonetheless, this development paved the way for a

reconceptualisation of ecological resilience in the broader context of social-ecological

systems. Probably the most cited contemporary definition of social-ecological resilience

can be found in Folke,52 in which resilience is composed of three elements: (1) the amount

of disturbance the system can absorb and still remain within the same state or domain of

attraction, (2) the degree to which the system is capable of ecological self-organisation and

(3) the degree to which the system can build and increase the capacity for learning and

adaptation.

The emergent governance agenda linked to this non-equilibrium framing is commonly

called adaptive management and adaptive governance.53

As the above discussion suggests, there have been significant changes in the

resilience narrative in recent years, linked to social-ecological systems increasingly

seeking to embrace other fields of theory. The framing has developed from a reified

position of social and ecological system dichotomies, in which systems are viewed as

closed with fixed boundaries as well as linear and causal relationships, to seeing them

as social-ecological coupled systems with open and episodic dynamics. Increasing

emphasis has also been placed on self-organisation, and networked and participatory

modes of governance.54 Theoretical work has explored the complementarity between

the systems approach of resilience theory and the actor-oriented emphasis of

vulnerability theory. That resilience and vulnerability approaches are complementary in

their emphasis on structural system characteristics is now widely acknowledged, as is

the importance of human agency, coping capacity and the exertion of power

relations.55 However, as noted above, the tensions surrounding the planetary

48 Berkes and Folke, Linking Social and Ecological Systems.49 R. Constanza et al., “Modeling Complex Ecological Economic Systems: Toward an EvolutionaryDynamic Understanding of People and Nature,” Bioscience 43, no. 8 (1993): 545.50 F. Berkes, C. Folke, and M. Gadgil, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Biodiversity, Resilienceand Sustainability (Stockholm: Stockholm Beijer International Institute, 1995).51 See A. Hornborg, “Grasping Sustainability: A Debate on Resilience Theory vs Political Ecology,”Seminar Presentation, 2011, Development Research Network on Nature, Poverty and Power, Centrefor Sustainable Development, Uppsala University, Sweden. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼D_NCSQ1qNac52 Folke, “Resilience.”53 Berkes and Folke, Linking Social and Ecological Systems; C. Pahl-Wostl, “A ConceptualFramework for Analysing Adaptive Capacity and Multi-Level Learning Processes in ResourceGovernance Regimes,” Global Environmental Change 19, no. 3 (2009): 354–65.54 B. Walker et al., “Resilience Management in Social-Ecological Systems: A Working Hypothesisfor a Participatory Approach,” Conservation Ecology 6, no. 1 (2002): 14; Miller et al., “Resilienceand Vulnerability.”55Miller et al., “Resilience and Vulnerability”; W.N. Adger, “Vulnerability,” Global EnvironmentalChange 16, no. 3 (2006): 268–81.

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boundaries metaphor reflect the remaining epistemic traps embedded in this narrative,

associated with the collapse of intrinsic systemic uncertainties and the deep

phenomenological contingencies of human agency into a one-dimensional realist

definition of an operating space for humanity. Indeed, previous meta-theoretical

critiques of resilience and vulnerability theories have demonstrated the persistence of a

tension in the ‘systems–actor’ relationship and an unresolved schism between the

perceived scientific epistemologies of ‘universalism’ and ‘subjectivism’.56

Narrative 3: epistemic resilience

As is argued above, despite the relative strengths of the social-ecological resilience

narrative, one central weakness is its tendency to retain the notion that knowable systems

can be bounded by expert science. While the two narratives above are not problematic

when there is a high degree of coherence between stakeholder views, they fall short of

informing intelligible actions when there is contestation, that is when societies face what

are commonly referred to as ill-defined problems or resource dilemmas. These dilemmas

are situations in which multiple stakeholders with different interests make competing

claims, which inevitably lead to controversy.57 This reflects the reliance, in both of the

above narratives, on a positivist-realist epistemology – reductionist in the case of the

engineering resilience narrative and holistic in the case of the socio-ecological resilience

narrative.58

The epistemic resilience narrative regards social-biophysical systems as phenomen-

ologically coupled.59 It recognises as inherent in the process of sense-making that

institutions and individuals superimpose bounded systems in order to ascribe

anthropogenic meaning and function to a perceived biophysical world. A core argument

is the recognition that sustainability is a negotiable concept, reflective of the ‘post-normal’

scientific tradition, which has in part grown out of an underlying constructionist

epistemology.60 Post-normal science focuses on the aspects of problem-solving that

cannot be resolved through ‘normal science’ practice, namely uncertainty and the plurality

of legitimate perspectives.61 In so doing, quality and rigour are based, within this scientific

tradition, on the degree to which legitimate stakeholder perspectives and the extended peer

community are acknowledged in the process of the extension of science for decision

support.62

56M. Emirbayer and A. Mische, “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 4(1998): 962–1023; P. Nadasdy, “Adaptive Co-Management and the Gospel of Resilience,” inAdaptive Co-Management: Collaboration, Learning and Multilevel Governance, ed. D. Armitage, F.Berkes, and N. Doubleday (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 208–27; P. McLaughlin and T. Dietz,“Structure, Agency and Environment: Toward an Integrated Perspective on Vulnerability,” GlobalEnvironmental Change 18, no. 1 (2008): 99–111.57 R. Ison, C. Blackmore, and J. Jiggins, “Social Learning: An Alternative Policy Instrument forManaging in the Context of Europe’s Water,” Environmental Science and Policy 10, no. 6 (2007):499–511.58 See also Powell and Larsen, “Integrated Water Resource Management”; N. Sriskandarajah et al.,“Resilience in Learning Systems: Case Studies in University Education,” Environmental EducationResearch 16, nos. 5–6 (2011): 559–73.59 H.R. Maturana and F.J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of HumanUnderstanding (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1992).60 Powell and Larsen, “Integrated Water Resource Management.”61 Funtowicz and Ravetz, “Science for the Post-Normal Age”; J.R. Ravetz, “The Post-NormalScience of Precaution,” Futures 36, no. 3 (2004): 347.62 Ravetz, “The Post-Normal Science.”

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The epistemic resilience narrative finds much resonance with the past decade of

developments in agricultural extension research and action learning, where scholars have

pioneered new approaches to fostering a reconciliation of divergent system boundaries and

stakeholder interests.63 The narrative thus builds on a sociology of knowledge, with its

recognition of how human agency simultaneously creates and responds to the objectified

social-ecological order.64 Adopting a constructionist epistemology, it includes a

proposition that interprets resilience in unstable systems as ‘a coupled system’s capacity

to learn (evolve) co-dependently’.65 This helps to position the notion of resilience within

the conception of governance as a negotiated and contested normative process.66 To some

extent, this approach therefore offers an alternative conception of the systems–actor

relationship and the prospects for an ‘epistemological shift’ in the way we understand

social-ecological systems.

In terms of governance responses, epistemic resilience emphasises the need for multi-

stakeholder processes and learning, mediated and facilitated through non-coercive

institutional measures that enable the negotiation of diverse boundary judgements.

An analytical distinction is sometimesmade between the so-called soft and critical systems-

based approaches, where the former is focused on the non-violent learning process among

stakeholders per se and the latter more specifically on the power differentials associated

with how stakeholders exert their influence in imposing boundaries.67 Such distinctions are

linked to a critical reading of the underlying political interests associated with promoting

‘stakeholding’ as a governance response and the risk of co-option by powerful elites.68

These concerns are also linked to an awareness of the limitations of the epistemic resilience

narrative and of the important role of democratically directed coercive governance

measures, especially in ensuring the accountability of powerful actors.

Narrative 4: intersubjective resilience

Inherent in the three resilience narratives outlined above is the analytical separation of

object and subject. In the epistemic resilience narrative, this separation is manifested in the

claim that the multiple representations of the material are socially constructed. This

feature partly reflects the fact that constructionist research has inherited a reliance on the

Hegelian idea of a dialectic, as the tension between thesis and antitheses. An oft-adopted

distinction is between the ‘concrete’ and the ‘epistemic’, which can also serve to separate

concrete enactment from epistemic reflection.69 Næss provides a well-known critique of

versions of this distinction, as reflective of the ‘shallow ecology’ of modern science and

63 R. Bawden, B. McKenzie, and R. Packham, “Moving Beyond the Academy: A Commentary onExtra-mural Initiatives in Systemic Development,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 24,no. 2 (2007): 129–41.64 See, for example, P. Berger and T. Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in theSociology of Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1966).65 Powell and Jiggins, “Participatory Land and Social Assessment.”66 R.K. Larsen and N. Powell, “Making Sense of Accountability in Baltic Agro-EnvironmentalGovernance: The Case of Denmark’s Green Growth Strategy,” Social and EnvironmentalAccountability Journal 33, no. 2 (2012): 71–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969160X.2012.74327667Midgley, Systemic Intervention.68 C. Leeuwis, “Reconceptualizing Participation for Sustainable Rural Development: Towards aNegotiation Approach,” Development and Change 31, no. 5 (2000): 931–59.69 See the review in R.K. Larsen, “Dialogue and Revolution: Proposal for Critical-PragmaticRecursive Praxis to Support Operationalisation of Methodological Virtues,” Systemic Practice andAction Research 26, no. 2 (2013): 173–193.

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the anthropocentric values that lead to the analytical identification of nature as the object

and humans as the observing subject. In contrast, ‘deep ecology’ offers a narrative that

subsumes humans into the material (see Figure 1D).70

Compared to the epistemic narrative, the intersubjective resilience narrative therefore

shifts the emphasis from the assumption of distinct entities coming to the table and

articulating differences and interests to the concrete and ongoing process of the enactment

of realities. As such, we see traces of the pragmatist philosophy of science and its

experiential learning traditions, which regard knowing as a process of ‘doing’.71 From

within the tradition of dialogical existentialism, Buber provides a helpful elaboration of

how learning comes about through engagement, which does not necessarily involve

epistemic coherence: ‘neither participant needs to give up his point of view; only, in that

unexpectedly they do something and unexpectedly something happens to them . . . they

enter into a realm where the law of point of view no longer holds’.72

Articulations that might inform an intersubjective conception of resilience are also

found in several accounts from non-Western contexts. Ingold, for example, describes how

hunter-gatherers ‘do not see themselves asmindful subjects having to contendwith the alien

world of physical objects: indeed the separation of mind and nature has no place in their

thought and practice’.73 With reference to the Cree peoples from Canada, Scott writes that

humans are not set over and against the material context of inert nature,74 but rather are one

species of persons in a network of reciprocating persons. Bird-Rose similarly articulates the

existence of a reciprocal relationship resting on subject–subject reciprocity.75

More recently, the works of Verran, Mol and Law have shown that we live in a

discursively heterogeneous and non-coherent world in which different realities coexist and

interact.76 Ontologies multiply and our classical Western scientific idea of the world is

only one among many to enact this reality. Alternative enactments can, for example, flow

from the aboriginal dream world or classical Chinese philosophy.77 Renewed emphasis

here is placed on the importance of social self-organisation, wherein different practices

intersect, overlap, interfere with and contradict each another to produce what might be

thought of as ontological complexity.78 In other words, this involves ‘holding things

70A. Næss, “The Shallow and the Deep: Long-Range Ecology Movement,” Inquiry 16, no. 1 (1973):95–100.71 James, Pragmatism; J. Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: Prometheus Books,2000).72 Buber, Between Man and Man.73 T. Ingold, “Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment,” in Redefining Nature:Ecology, Culture and Domestication, ed. R. Ellen and F. Katsuyoshi (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 120.74 C. Scott, “Knowledge Construction among the Cree Hunters: Metaphors and LiteralUnderstanding,” Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 75, no. 1 (1989): 193–208.75 D. Bird-Rose, “Sacred Site, Ancestral Clearing, and the Generation of Life” (Draft Paper preparedfor the Myth to Minerals Conference, Canberra, 1997), 11.76 H. Verran, “Re-Imagining Land Ownership in Australia,” Postcolonial Studies 1, no. 2 (1998):237–54; H. Verran, Science and an African Logic (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2001);A. Mol, The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice (Durham, CA: Duke University Press,2002); J. Law, “Making a Mess with Method,” in The Sage Handbook of Social ScienceMethodology, ed. William Outhwaite and Stephen P. Turner (London: Sage, 2007), 595–606; andJ. Law, “On Sociology and STS,” The Sociological Review 56, no. 4 (2008): 623–49.77 Verran, “Re-Imagining Land Ownership”; W. Lin and J. Law, “A Correlative STS? Lessons froma Chinese Medical Practice” (CRESC working paper 128, 2013).78 J. Law and V. Singelton, “Object Lessons,” Organisation 12, no. 3 (2005): 331–55; C. Leeuwisand N. Aarts, “Rethinking Communication in Innovation Processes: Creating Space for Change inComplex Systems,” Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 17, no. 1 (2010): 21–36.

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[together] that don’t quite fit’.79 We have adopted the label intersubjective resilience but

this worldview, which subjectifies what are considered objects by the first three narratives,

could equally well be referred to as consubstantiality or interconvertibility.80

Mobilising new resilience narratives to address conflicts of interest

The contemporary resilience narrative and its objectivist emphasis on boundaries and

targets have sheltered scientists and policy-makers from the inherent ambiguities in the

existing policy landscape. Meanwhile, those engaged in the messy act of implementing

policy, and, moreover, the ‘recipients’, that is stakeholders and citizens in everyday life,

are being bombarded with divergent and ambiguous instructions that cannot readily

articulate the dilemmas they face (see Box 1). We have sought to demonstrate above the

diversity of alternative and possibly coexisting resilience narratives that might be adopted

to allow for meaning-making and the fostering of concrete action.

One particular challenge in the social-ecological resilience narrative lies in the

assumptions underlying the conceptualisation of institutions and collective action,

which are ill-suited to addressing wicked issues. To illustrate the importance of

considering alternative resilience narratives in this context, it is helpful to revisit the

debate on the types of social dilemmas that Garrett Hardin first communicated in his

infamous essay, ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, almost half a century ago.81 Despite the

remarkable convening capacity of Hardin’s metaphor, and the flurry of research activity

that followed in the search for appropriate institutional approaches to governing

commons, the general interpretation is that we continue to see widespread instances of

free riding and selfish actions leading to natural resource degradation.82 The legacy of

Hardin’s metaphor has led to a generation of environmental governance research into

commons, partly underlying the social-ecological resilience narrative, that has

advocated either private or centralised property arrangements.83 More recently,

significant work has been undertaken on designing common property institutions as a

means to steer clear of the commons trap.84

Paradoxically, perhaps the real ‘tragedy’ in scientific praxis has been triggered by the

substantial body of adversarial critique that Hardin’s essay generated, including within the

social-ecological resilience narrative. The critique suggests that he misrepresented

property relations in the commons. This significant body of social-ecological and political

economy scholarship has concealed an uncontested assumption inherent within his essay.

With reference to both the metaphorical commons dilemmas outlined in his essay, ‘the

degrading grassland’ and ‘the polluted water body’, Hardin assumes that a system state is

knowable. In Hardin’s first case, this assumption appears logical – namely that herders (a

stakeholder) share similar views on what constitutes a desirable system (abundant

palatable pasture). They can thus end up in a situation characterised by individualistic rent-

seeking behaviour in the absence of a property regime, which ultimately leads to the

degradation of the overall commons. In Hardin’s far less cited second case on water

79 J. Law et al., “Modes of Syncretism.”80 Ingold, “Hunting and Gathering,” 139.81 Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons.”82 P. Fidelman et al., “Governing Large-Scale Commons: Contextual Challenges in the CoreTriangle,” Marine Policy 36, no. 1 (2012): 42–53.83 D. Bromley, “Testing for Commons Versus Private Property: Comment,” Journal ofEnvironmental Economics and Management 21, no. 1 (1991): 92.84 E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

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pollution, his assumptions about the generic character and the existence of one knowable

desirable system state become problematic. Evidence from several significant EU research

projects suggests that water resource contexts are characterised by social dilemmas, which

Box 1: The case of water resource governance in the EU.

Our reading of the intrinsic risks in ‘boundary prescription’ associated with the

contemporary resilience narrative is informed by the many practical examples where

espoused shifts to self-organised and negotiated approaches to governance are

undermined by the imposition of preconceived fixed boundaries. A well-established

example is the implementation of stakeholder-based approaches in the European

Union’s (EU) governance instruments targeting water resources, such as the Water

Framework Directive (WFD), the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the EU’s

Cohesion Policy.85 Many new EU policy initiatives now set out to include the so-called

participatory and stakeholder-based approaches as a means of overcoming the

weaknesses of the sectoral approaches to problem-solving. For instance, the WFD was

an attempt to transcend a ‘fragmented’ environmental legislative approach through the

introduction of context-specific and stakeholder-defined targets, manifested as ‘good

ecological status’ and ‘good chemical status’. Similarly, the EU’s Cohesion Policy has

been framed as a non-coercive policy instrument designed to enable integrated outcomes

across sectors and stakeholders (and their respective boundary judgements), for example

through national facilitators on action areas such as nutrient pollution and water

dependent livelihoods such as fisheries. Research has shown how strict targets and the

boundary judgements of experts and national policy owners continue to dominate at the

expense of espoused stakeholding.86 Boundary-oriented sustainability narratives thus

persist, locking the EU into a situation in which states and actors generally perform

poorly in fostering collective action within their specific sectoral domain, let alone in

terms of complex systemic issues such as climate change which transcend sectors and

stakeholder groups. This disabling environment continues tomotivate EUmember states

to prioritise national targets at the expense of transboundary collaboration on water

resources, as is shown, for example, with regard to transboundary cooperation on water

pollution and the resistance to even simple data-sharing across catchments. Perceptions

of differential treatment between states and a lack of ownership among farmers and other

target groups of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which distributes the largest

portion of EU tax revenue, also reflect a general tendency of state-steered design, or

target- or boundary-oriented policy measures linked to selfish concerns about meeting

EU requirements and protecting domestic agricultural markets. In this manner,

boundary-driven governance encourages a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ syndrome, which

is rife within and between EU member states and between EU and non-EU states.87

85 N. Powell et al., The Common Agricultural Policy Post-2013: A Pathway to Regional Cohesion?2012, SEI Project Report, http://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid¼2261.86 S. Fletcher, “Converting Science to Policy through Stakeholder Involvement: An Analysis of theEuropean Marine Strategy Directive,”Marine Pollution Bulletin 54, no. 12 (2007): 1881–86; C. Stohrand C. Chabay, “Science and Participation in Governance of the Baltic Sea Fisheries,” EnvironmentalPolicy andGovernance20, no. 5 (2010): 350–63;Larsen andPowell, “MakingSense ofAccountability”;and R.K. Larsen and N. Powell, “Policy Coherence for Sustainable Agricultural Development:Uncovering Prospects and Pretence within the Swedish Policy for Global Development,” DevelopmentPolicy Review 31, no. 6 (2013): 757–6.[Q32]87 Powell et al., Common Agricultural Policy.

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grow out of the controversy over defining in what system state water is considered to be

‘polluted’.88 This recognition recasts the notion of ‘conflicts between interests’ inferred by

Hardin into a ‘conflict of interest’, in a situation embedded in a social dilemma

underpinned by an ill-defined problem context which expert scientists are unable to

transcend. In these situations, as is discussed above, the epistemic and intersubjective

resilience narratives have definite advantages.

While the social-ecological resilience narrative has its relative efficacy in addressing

complex natural resource governance issues, it does not enable reflection on crucial

problematic and ill-defined dilemmas. Here, it is necessary to explore the factors that

enable a collective and iterative negotiation of ‘boundaries’ in order to identify adaptation

pathways. The epistemic resilience narrative helps us to view stakeholders not simply as

actors within a knowable system boundary, but as state-holders in their own right,89

illustrating the fact that individuals, groups and institutions strive to retain and build the

resilience of a specific (unstable) system state. As is outlined above, this view builds on a

legacy of systems research in which stakeholders are understood to actively construct their

own stake in a resource dilemma.90 Furthermore, the intersubjective resilience narrative

enables approaches to self-organisation without imposing a ‘burden’ of epistemic inquiry

or convergence of awareness among stakeholders as a premise for concerted action.

Instead, it shifts the emphasis to the opportunity to co-engage in joint tasks and praxis

through which more resilient governance realities may be constructed.

Conclusion: orchestrating performances in a landscape of contested resilience

narratives

All narratives have limitations and, as powerful instruments, their enactment requires

deliberation based on the situation, context and purpose. As van Bommel and van der

Zouwen note: ‘This is particularly relevant for scientific narratives, because they are made

more “real” than other narratives. The narratives of researchers do not offer simple

descriptions, but in their telling “perform” certain realities’.91 Appreciating the wicked

character of natural resource issues inspires a view of human nature that is not

instrumental, strategic or selfish, but calls for narratives that support the fostering of

concerted action through interactive, non-violent ‘performances’.92

We demonstrate above that there are at least four coexisting resilience narratives that

can be adopted by researchers and state-holders in their ongoing practice. The social-

88 R.L. Ison, N. Roling, and D. Watson, “Challenges to Science and Society in SustainableManagement and Use of Water: Investigating the Role of Social Learning,” Environmental Scienceand Policy 10, no. 6 (2007): 499–511; N. Powell and M. Osbeck, “Understanding and EmbeddingStakeholder Realities in Coastal Governance: The Case of Mangroves in the Mahakam Delta, EastKalimantan,” International Journal of Sustainable Development 18, no. 3 (2010): 260–70.89 R.K. Larsen, F. Thomalla, and E.L. Calgaro, “Governing Resilience Building in Thailand’sTourism-Dependent Coastal Communities: The Role of Stakeholder Agency,” Journal of GlobalEnvironmental Change 21, no. 2 (2011): 481–91.90 P. Checkland and J. Scholes, Soft Systems Methodology in Action (West Sussex: Wiley, 1999);P. Steyaert and J. Jiggins, “Governance of Complex Environmental Situations through SocialLearning: A Synthesis of SLIM’s Lessons for Research, Policy and Practice,” EnvironmentalScience & Policy 10, no. 1 (2008): 575–86; Ison, Roling, and Watson, “Challenges to Science.”91 van Bommel and van der Zouwen, “Creating Scientific Narratives: Experiences in Constructingand Interweaving Empirical and Theoretical Plots,” in Forest and Nature Governance, WorldForests 14, ed. B. Arts et al. (Dordrecht: Springer Science, 2013), 219.92 N. Roling and M. Maarleveld, “Facing Strategic Narratives: An Argument for InteractiveEffectiveness,” Agriculture and Human Values 16, no. 3 (1999): 295–308.

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ecological resilience narrative, with its associated Anthropocene discourse, has certain

advantages compared to the earlier engineering resilience narrative, but remains fraught

with considerable limitations owing to its epistemological and ontological entrapment.

The epistemic resilience narrative and the intersubjective resilience narrative have

emerged in response. Our purpose above is to demonstrate the relative efficacies of these

four resilience narratives in order to raise awareness and increase the opportunities for

more conscious choices in both research and governance.

Accounting for this ongoing process of narrative enactment is an important task for

research and,we believe, is still largely unexplored territorywith regard to resilience research.

Central questions remain unanswered in theory as well as practice. How can resilience

research foster state-holder performance that competently navigates multiple coexisting

resilience narratives? Howmight strategies be fostered to ensure that irreconcilable practices

can coexist?Howcan theseperformances allow formeta-level synergistic practice to emerge?

In this regard, there is a need for the resilience research community to engage more actively

with, learn from and support state-holders in their ongoing efforts to enact, reconstruct and

hybridise multiple resilience narratives in everyday life.

The four resilience narratives are capable of serving as ‘governance narratives’, and

informing policy choices and institutional interventions. A narrative will always be partly

inspired by outside forces when it enters an in situ wicked natural resource dilemma and

will as such invariably contain presumptions and legacies. On encountering the in situ

situation, the narrative will, at least in part, be reconstituted through a blurring that gives

way to a dissonance compared to its original intentions. In this process, both governance

and scientific narratives have the opportunity to empower and learn from the perspectives

and local practices of state-holders, who will often express narratives more coherent with

the wicked situation at hand. At the end of the day, the resilience narratives of the research

community can only be toolkits to support a greater cognisance of the diversity of the

peoples, perspectives and performances that jointly narrate the ‘real’ stories of our wicked

and contested realities.

Funding

This paper was developed under the CADWAGO project (Climate Adaptation and Water

Governance Project; “http://www.cadwago.net” and was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond,

Compagnia di San Paolo, and VolkswagenStiftung as part of the “Europe and Global Challenges

programme” [grant number GC12-1545:1].

Notes on contributors

Neil Scott Powell is a Professor and the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development atUppsala University. He is also a Professorial Fellow at the Sustainability Research Centre at theUniversity of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Rasmus Kløcker Larsen holds a PhD and is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm EnvironmentInstitute.

Severine van Bommel is an Associate Professor with the Communication Studies Group,Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

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