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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
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/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: [email protected]
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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