The Atlas of Social Complexity. Chapter 26: Resilience and all that Jazz

The first major content theme in The Atlas of Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. This first theme includes six chapters, which I have so far blogged on. Chapter 6 addresses autopoiesis. Chapter 7 turns to the role of bacteria in human consciousness. Chapter 8 explores how the immune system, just like bacteria and cells, is cognitive – and the implications this has for our wider brain-based consciousness. Chapter 9 explores a complexity framing of brain-based cognition, emotion and consciousness. Chapter 10 explores the complex multilevel dynamics of the Self. Chapter 11 is about human-machine intelligence. 

The second major content theme in The Atlas of Social Complexity is The Dynamics of Human Psychology. So far for this theme, I’ve given a basic overview, found here. I then moved on to the first theme, Human psychology as dynamical system (Chapter 13). From there I reviewed Chapter 14: Psychopathology of mental disorders ; Chapter 15: Healing and the therapeutic process; and Chapter 16: Mindfulness, imagination, and creativity. 

 

The third major theme is living in social systems (Chapter 17). The first chapter in this section is Complex social psychology (Chapter 18). From there we move on to Collective behaviour, social movements and mass psychology (Chapter 19). Next is Configurational Social Science (Chapter 20). From there we move to the Complexities of Place (Chapter 21); followed by Socio-technical Life (Chapter 22). Chapter 23 turned to the theme of Governance, Politics and Technocracy. Chapter 24 focused on The Challenges of Applying Complexity. Chapter 25 focused on Economics in an unstable world.

The focus of the current post is CHAPTER 26: RESILIENCE AND ALL THAT JAZZ

QUICK OVERVIEW OF CHAPTER

Environmental sciences in a book about social complexity? Certainly. The study of ecologies and natural systems has generated a wealth of insights about complexity that cannot be ignored by social scientists. Importantly, the distinction between social and natural or physical systems is analytical only. In reality, social life is deeply embedded in all sorts of ecological processes. It is common to think of this embedding or coupledness in terms of socio-ecological systems. This part of the tour surveys the complexity of that coupledness, e.g., in terms of coevolution, and discusses its analytical implications for the study of social complexity. We will spend ample attention to the concept of resilience because it originates from the study of coupled socio-ecological systems, and in many ways has gained more traction than other concepts from the complexity sciences.

 

The idea that the natural state of the earth is being put under pressure as a consequence of humankind’s exploitation has a long history. While there may have been times when smoking chimneys were regarded as signs of improvement during the Industrial Revolution,[1] such romanticised images of societal progress have long since disappeared. The environmental crisis that has risen since then, as exemplified in e.g., the break-down of the ozone layer, acid rain, and, more recently, rising worldwide average temperatures, is clear for all but the most sceptical. The study of the environment and its reciprocal relationship with human activities continues to attract considerable scholarly attention. Importantly, this scholarly work has contributed significantly to the complexity canon. Consider, for example, how system dynamics modelling aids to understanding the feedback loops driving environmental change;[2] how the concept of coevolution articulates the reciprocity in coupled socio-ecological systems;[3] or how hysteresis helps understanding why it is incredibly difficult to restore ecological systems to a previous stable state once toppled into a new state.[4]

 

The inclusion of this intellectual strand in the Atlas is threefold. Firstly, it is one of the fields that was quick to recognize that the earth, the environment, the atmosphere, the ecosystems and their niches, etc. are best understood as complex systems.[5] In terms of a human example, fertilizers and climate change can impact the vegetation of a grassland (biotic) and the quality of the minerals and soil (abiotic) upon which the ecosystem depends, which leads to changes in biodiversity. This is why an ecological community is systemic and complex.

 

This insight takes us to the second reason why this theme should be explored in the Atlas: it is useless to think of ecosystems as existing independently from complex social systems. Humans and their environmental are fully intertwined.

 

The third reason follows from the previous two: of all concepts and methodologies gathered in the complexity canon, it is those from environmental sciences that – on the whole – appear to resonate strongly with a wider audience in their application to pressing societal problems.

 

One of those rich aspects is resilience.

 

Resilience, it must be stressed again, is a concept used just as much outside of social complexity or the study of SES, as it is within these fields.[6] Somewhat predictably, there are multiple and competing definitions of resilience.[7] This is not only because different applications ask for different conceptualizations, but it is also because the concept has been around long enough to be refined (but not discarded).

 

Arguably the most well-known version is the one introduced by Crawford Stanley Holling in 1973. In this seminal paper[8], he argues that resilience is present when systems bounce back after having been put under strain.

 

Clearly, there is more to it than this simple working definition. What, exactly, is a socio-ecosystem’s internal structure? How can one know a system’s limits, and, knowing that coupled systems are multifaceted instead of monoliths, how many limits does a system have? What are the timescales for short-term and long-term recovery? And, importantly, under what conditions can a system be said to have been restored to its original state? These are tough questions, but the last one is especially difficult to answer when it comes to social systems.

 

The main point is this: definitions and operationalizations of resilience are much harder than the general idea of resilience. It is very difficult to move from that general idea (that works as long as it is being kept simplistic and abstract) to concrete assessments of such resilience (that quickly can become something in the eye of the beholder).

 

The power of the concept is that it can be understood intuitively and that it offers an overarching concept that can host several other important aspects of complex systems, including regime shifts, punctuated equilibrium and hysteresis.[9] A such, it captures many aspects that we surveyed in this Theme 4 of the Atlas – and so, we suggest all readers engage this topic as it is not standalone. Instead, it is deeply tied to everything else we have surveyed on our tour.

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[1] Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 4. Aktual. edition (München: C.H.Beck, 2009).

[2] D. H. Meadows, ‘Whole Earth Models and Systems’, CoEvolution Quarterly, 1982, 98–108.

[3] M. A. Gual and R. B. Norgaard, ‘Bridging Ecological and Social Systems Coevolution: A Review and Proposal’, Ecological Economics 69, no. 4 (2010): 707–17.

[4] Marten Scheffer and Stephen R. Carpenter, ‘Catastrophic Regime Shifts in Ecosystems: Linking Theory to Observation’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18, no. 12 (December 2003): 648–56.

[5] S. A. Levin, ‘Ecosystems and the Biosphere as Complex Adaptive Systems’, Ecosystems 1, no. 5 (1998): 431–36; Gregg Hartvigsen, Ann Kinzig, and Garry Peterson, ‘Complex Adaptive Systems: Use and Analysis of Complex Adaptive Systems in Ecosystem Science: Overview of Special Section’, Ecosystems 1, no. 5 (1 September 1998): 427–30; C. S. Holling, ‘Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems’, Ecosystems 4, no. 5 (1 August 2001): 390–405.

[6] Tuna Taşan-Kok, Dominic Stead, and Peiwen Lu, ‘Conceptual Overview of Resilience: History and Context’, in Resilience Thinking in Urban Planning, ed. Ayda Eraydin and Tuna Taşan-Kok, GeoJournal Library (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013), 39–51; Ran Bhamra, Samir Dani, and Kevin Burnard, ‘Resilience: The Concept, a Literature Review and Future Directions’, International Journal of Production Research 49, no. 18 (15 September 2011): 5375–93.

[7] Patrick Martin-Breen and J. Marty Anderies, ‘Resilience: A Literature Review’, 2011.

[8] C. S. Holling, ‘Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4 (1973): 1–23.

[9] Joana Figueiredo and Henrique M. Pereira, ‘Regime Shifts in a Socio-Ecological Model of Farmland Abandonment’, Landscape Ecology 26, no. 5 (1 May 2011): 737–49; Marjolein Sterk, Ingrid A van de Leemput, and Edwin THM Peeters, ‘How to Conceptualize and Operationalize Resilience in Socio-Ecological Systems?’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Sustainability governance, 28 (1 October 2017): 108–13.