Resilience (sociology)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In modern sociology, the term resilience (from the Latin resilire : bounce, jump back, not cling) describes the ability of societies to cope with external disturbances without their essential system functions changing. In addition, the concept of resilience is used as a heuristic to analyze non-linear social and socio-historical processes.

In the social discourse, “resilience” has established itself primarily as a counter or complementary term to “ vulnerability ”. In the foreground is the question of the resilience and regenerative capacity of societies in the face of complex and increasingly unpredictable risks, including those caused by humans. It is assumed that societies can not only cope with such risks, but also learn from them, adapt to future challenges and thus transform themselves. The term resilience is used in a similar way to that in ecosystem research and increasingly also in engineering and political risk research (“resilience policy”). It is thus - like its counter-term vulnerability - an example of the travels of ideas from guiding ideas to the functioning of complex systems across disciplinary boundaries.

Definition and theory

The term was first used in 1967 by the anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport to refer to the Papuan tribal societies , which, not least through their rituals, successfully regulate and stabilize their ecosystem and thus their nutritional basis. For functionalist ethnology, anthropology and sociology, resilience has long been a force that maintained social and ecological balance.

Newer approaches assume the repeated disturbance of the equilibrium as the normal case. Gunderson and Holling from the Stockholm Resilience Center define the resilience of a socio-ecological or social system (or a society) as the greatest possible disturbance (the magnitude of the disturbance) that the system can cope with without changing essential structures and control processes. This definition is embedded in her “theory of adaptive cycles”, which assumes that social systems typically develop in four phases:

  • Growth phase ("growth" or "exploitation"): In this early phase, all energy flows into the construction of system structures and the accumulation of capital - this means natural resources as well as social (networks), cultural (knowledge) or financial capital. The networking of the system with its environment is intensive.
  • Consolidation and conservation phase (“conservation”): This phase is characterized by increasing the efficiency of the system; Redundancies are eliminated through increased division of labor, internal tightness and the extent of internal integration increase. The energies flow into the intensification of the system processes. Rigid forms of control and domination increase the efficiency of the system and in some cases enable monumental cultural achievements, but entail inflexibility. Networking with the environment decreases at the same time.
  • Disruption and subsequent collapse with low resilience: At various points in time during system development, external disruptions can occur that threaten the system, destroy the accumulated capital and lead to the collapse of internal networks. This process of disintegration does not have to occur suddenly and also does not have to end violently or catastrophically; it can drag on for a long time if the resilience of the system is great enough.
  • Reorganization (“reorganization”): This leads to a recovery and reorganization of the system, often at a lower level of internal integration and with less complexity and efficiency, but greater flexibility and creativity. The external contacts are intensified again, innovations from the outside flow in.

To characterize the third phase, the authors use the concept of “creative destruction” borrowed from Schumpeter to make clear that the collapse creates space for new things. But they also borrow from the theory of long cycles ( Kondratjew ), the theory of complex systems and the models of incremental or transformative learning . There are also parallels to Charles Perrow's concept of decoupling, i.e. the loosening or dissolution of closely linked systemic relationships . For social systems, too, “ loose coupling ” is a resilience factor, as Perrow defines it for technical systems.

Overall, these phases are characterized by a reciprocal interplay of coping, adaptation and transformation processes. The “adaptive cycles” are embedded in a panarchic perspective, which emphasizes the multilevel links between different systems.

Charlie Edwards' 4-R model is intended to describe which factors increase a society's resilience to natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Are core elements of a resilient society according to Edwards

  • Robustness, d. H. the ability of a system to withstand stress;
  • Redundancy ("redundancy"), ie the existence of alternative options for fulfilling vital tasks of a system;
  • Ingenuity ("resourcefulness") in the sense of the ability of a system to react creatively to a damaging event;
  • "Rapidity", d. H. the rapid reaction and regeneration capacity of a system in the event of a disaster.

Robustness and redundancy are among the factors of mitigation and preparedness, while ingenuity and speed are assigned to the crisis response and recovery phases.

The evolutionary economics looks especially in the social and economic diversity (Sociology) a factor that creates redundancy and resilience increased, since it is subject to selection.

Redman and Kinzig point out that not all resilience-promoting factors act equally in all phases of the adaptive cycle. On the contrary, in different phases they can have a stabilizing effect, but sometimes aggravate the crisis. The resilience factor redundancy can devour high system resources; Too much robustness can lead to a lack of flexibility. Trust is seen as a resilience-promoting factor, too much trust makes you vulnerable to the unexpected. Also at different levels of aggregation of social coexistence - e.g. B. household, village, tribe or society - resilience factors can have different effects. One factor that increases family resilience can weaken that of a tribe.

Resilience thus appears ambivalent, namely both as a factor that accelerates change and one that promotes systemic inertia, slows down social change and hinders adaptation to changed environments. This is the reason for the vagueness of the concept.

Research on the resilience of societies

Compared to individual and organizational resilience research, empirical or historical research into social resilience is still comparatively sparse, although this system level is more complex and multi-layered.

The discourse on the resilient society ties in with research on the vulnerability and interdependence of societies that went back to the 1970s and was carried out by social geography and human ecology .

Particularly in the Anglo-Saxon area, the parallels between ecosystems and social systems are emphasized, which often leads to a biological-evolutionist approach. In contrast, German environmental scientists and geographers mostly assume a direct exchange between people and nature or spontaneous adaptations that also ignore social aspects.

In the meantime, more and more disciplines are dealing with questions of social resilience. The thematic focus is on the one hand on the development of a non-linear theory of social processes and on the other hand on the development of orientation knowledge and application-related questions for politics and planning in dealing with environmental changes (e.g. climate change) and natural disasters. From a political science perspective, the resilience of societies to terrorism and crime or the resistance of authoritarian regimes to civil revolutions have been the focus of interest for several years. Occasionally there are also interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary pioneering contributions to the discussion about resilient societies.

Resilience of cities and regions

Overall, urban structures have proven to be extremely resilient in the last few centuries, mainly because of their decentralized and redundant structures. A characteristic of the discussion about urban resilience, which has intensified since 2001, is that it has never been viewed only in a technical or infrastructural context. Rather, urban research tries to identify social resilience factors that improve the ability of cities to recover in the event of natural disasters, wars or terrorist attacks or counteract the decay of urban districts and the spread of insecurity, crime and chaos. The explanatory models often used in this context, such as B. the " Broken Windows Theory ", which states that vacancies, graffiti and broken window panes are objective indicators of crime and lead to further crime, ignore the necessary differentiation between the levels of imagination, ascription, identity, status formation, etc. because they do not take into account the subjective views, resilience and actions of those affected. The landscape and social geographer Gerhard Hard speaks of the construction of “ontological slums” in this context.

Researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Center point out that urban resilience should not be confused with ecological sustainability . A city with an extremely high population density is probably energy efficient, but highly vulnerable. Conversely, redundancy is a principle that increases resilience but decreases efficiency. Trying to make cities more resilient is very resource-intensive.

Evolutionary economic geography examines the resilience of economic regions, e.g. B. classic industrial regions, after crises and restructuring. A region is resilient if it is e.g. B. can generate new endogenous growth after a prolonged phase of decline or after shock effects. Complex learning processes are required for this, which not only require functioning markets and networks, but much more well-functioning public institutions, e.g. B. Schools and Universities. Using example scenarios, the mutual dependency of elements of the infrastructure is examined, the failure of which could lead to cascade risks.

More recently, resilience has become more important in coping with the consequences of a changed climate.

In 2018, the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research (BBSR) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) provided a methodical approach to testing urban resilience ("stress test") using the city of Cologne as an example . On epidemics was thereby not discussed.

Resilience of historical societies

From an archaeological perspective, there is an increasing number of studies on the resilience of prehistoric societies and cultures, such as the early history of Mesopotamia and the pre-Columbian Hohokam culture in the southwest of the USA or the history of the settlements of the Rhenish ceramicists . Based on 25 generations of houses in the older Neolithic of the Rhineland, Robin Peters interprets the disturbances, which can be seen in demographic development, as a possible consequence of land conflicts and increasing territorial behavior in the face of population growth. Towards the end of the adaptive cycle, risk management strategies appeared to be more flexible.

A research group from sociology and medieval studies at the University of Trier is also concerned with the resilience of various historical societies in phases of upheaval that threaten their existence. Resilience is understood as a concept of social introspection, the analysis of which focuses on processes of interpretation and construction. The interplay of continuities and discontinuities in socio-historical processes is particularly emphasized.

Resilient organizations

The term resilience has also been applied to corporate contexts since the late 1990s. Since then, the US and Europe have been investigating the question with growing interest: What criteria must an organization meet in order to be robust enough to withstand unpredictable crisis situations (e.g. technological leaps, economic crises, market developments, etc.)? The best-known studies include the contributions of Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliff - they are considered the pioneers - and by Annette Gebauer and Ursula Kiel-Dixon - both brought the concept of resilience to Germany in the 2000s. Both teams researched the organizational structures of so-called High Reliability Organizations (HRO), i. H. Organizations that operate in an unclear and changing crisis environment such as B. military or fire brigade. One of the many important criteria of HROs is an error culture that is not limited to blame, but actively searches for sources of error in order to learn from them for the future. Another criterion is the avoidance of unnecessary complexity .

According to BS Standard BS65000 (2014), resilience describes the ability of a company to foresee change in a complex and dynamic environment, to survive and even to grow ( organizational resilience ). So was u. a. Ensuring the continuity of business operations of companies in the event of a disaster or disaster is the subject of resilience research. Standards for corresponding precautions are defined in the ISO 22301-2012 “Societal security - Business continuity management systems - Requirements” standard. However, with a number of such definitions, the delimitation of the term resilience and the term resistance becomes blurred . Resilience is not just about maintaining the organization today, but also about reorganization after a crisis and future growth through innovation.

More and more companies today are also interested in the question of which resources make managers and employees more mentally resilient and promote their health in order to prevent the increasing burnout trend.

Discussion and criticism

Thus, different disciplines have appropriated the terms “resilience” and “vulnerability” and concentrate in their studies on different dimensions of resilience. However, according to Bürkner, research often only uses metaphorical idioms and everyday cultural and empirical (pseudo) typologies that are transferred from one context to the other; Above all, spatial planning, human ecology and urban research were characterized by a “sub-theorization”.

So far, social science resilience research has generally focused on “hard” influencing factors; “Soft factors” were given comparatively little consideration. These soft factors such as B. Influences of religion or socialization were previously a domain of psychological vulnerability and resilience research. The focus is on the individual and their resilience or vulnerability in the face of risk factors and the threat of trauma (see resilience (psychology) ).

Critics accuse the resilience discourse in environmental and development policy that it distracts from the need to consistently pursue sustainability goals. Many analyzes fell short of the mark because they were limited to strengthening personal protective factors against social risks. Conversely, the targeted increase in resilience to disasters and terrorist attacks pursued by many countries as part of security policy ("resilience policy") could lead to constant alarmism, to the militarization of everyday life and permanent emergency exercises such as during the Cold War , which increases the resilience factor of "trust" does not necessarily have to increase, but can also undermine it. Conversely, a merely symbolic resilience policy can generate unjustified trust in system services.

If the concept is not overstretched and does not lead to the complete shifting of the responsibility for dealing with crises of various kinds to the individual ("resilience as a panacea"), it appears, however, as a fruitful theoretical paradigm , which the interdisciplinary connection of sociological, cultural-historical and enables ecological research.

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Blum, Martin Endreß, Stefan Kaufmann, Benjamin Rampp: Sociological Perspectives . In: Rüdiger Wink (Ed.): Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Resilience Research . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-09623-6 , p. 151-177 .
  2. ↑ Martin Endress, Benjamin Rampp: Resilience as a perspective on social processes. Towards a Sociological Theory . In: Martin Endreß, Andrea Maurer (Ed.): Resilience in the social. Theoretical and empirical analyzes . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-05999-6 , pp. 33-55 .
  3. ^ J. Birkmann: Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: Towards Disaster Resilient Societies. United Nations Univ Pr, 2006.
  4. ^ B. Walker, D. Salt: Resilience Thinking. Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. 2006, ISBN 1-59726-093-2 , p. 1.
  5. ^ Barbara Czarniawska, Barbara, Bernward Joerges: Travels of ideas. In: Dies./Guje Sevón (ed.): Translating organizational change. Berlin: de Gruyter 1996, pp. 13-48.
  6. ↑ Stefan Kaufmann, Sabine Blum: Vulnerability and Resilience. For wandering about ideas in the environmental and safety discussion . In: Roderich von Detten, Fenn Faber, Martin Bemmann (eds.): Unpredictable environment. To deal with uncertainty and not knowing . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-94223-0 , p. 91-120 .
  7. ^ RA Rappaport: Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven 1967.
  8. ↑ LH Gunderson, CS Holling (ed.): Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington DC 2002, pp. 4, 28.
  9. ↑ p. 32 ff.
  10. ↑ p. 45.
  11. ^ Carl Folke, Johan Rockström, Terry Chapin, Marten Scheffer, Brian Walker, Stephen Carpenter: Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability . In: Ecology and Society . tape 15 , no. 4 , November 15, 2010, ISSN  1708-3087 , doi : 10.5751 / ES-03610-150420 ( ecologyandsociety.org [accessed May 6, 2019]).
  12. ↑ Markus Keck, Patrick Sakdapolrak: What is social resilience? Lessons learned and ways forward . In: Geography . tape 67 , no. 1 , 2013, p. 5-19 .
  13. ↑ LH Gunderson, CS Holling (ed.): Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems . Washington DC 2002, ISBN 978-1-55963-857-9 , pp. 63 ff .
  14. ↑ Ch. Edwards: Resilient Nation. London 2009, ISBN 978-1-906693-13-8 .
  15. ^ CL Redman, AP Kinzig: Resilience of past landscapes: resilience theory, society, and the longue durée. In: Conservation Ecology. 7 (1), 2003. [1]
  16. ↑ Axel Schaffer, Eva Lang , Susanne Hartard (eds.): Systems in crisis in the focus of resilience and sustainability. Metropolis Verlag, Munich 2014.
  17. ↑ H. Bohle , G. Downing, E. Thomas, MJ Watts: Climate change and social vulnerability: toward a sociology and geography of food insecurity. In: Global Environmental Change. 4, 1994, pp. 37-48.
  18. ↑ In summary: Irasema Alcántara-Ayala, Andrew S. Goudie: Geomorphological Hazards and Disaster Prevention . Cambridge University Press 2010.
  19. ↑ Hans-Joachim Bürkner: Vulnerability and Resilience. IRS-Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning, Working Paper 43, Erkner 2010, p. 8. [2]
  20. ↑ Jörn Birkmann: Assessing vulnerability before, during and after a natural disaster in fragile regions. Research Paper No. 2008/50 UNU-WIDER. Bonn 2008.
  21. ^ JA Goldstone: Understanding the Revolutions of 2011: Weakness and Resilience in Middle Eastern Autocracies. In: Foreign Affairs. May / June 2011. [3]
  22. ↑ Karidi, Maria, Schneider, Martin, Gutwald, Rebecca (Ed., 2018): Resilienz - Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Change and Transformation. Jumper
  23. ↑ Fathi , K. (2019c): Resilience in the area of ​​tension between development and sustainability - requirements for securing the future of society in the 21st century. Springer publishing house
  24. ↑ See the critical position of HV Savitch: Cities in a Time of Terror. New York 2008.
  25. ↑ For the United Kingdom, see Martin Innes, Vanessa Jones: Neighborhood Security and Urban Change: Risk, Resilience and Recovery. Rowntree Foundation 2006. ISBN 978-1859355312 .
  26. ^ Gerhard Hard: A social geography of everyday regionalizations. In: Erdkunde Bd. 52 (1998), H. 3, S. 250-253, here: S. 250.
  27. ↑ Thomas Elmqvist, E. Andersson, N. Frantzeskaki et al. a .: Sustainability and resilience for transformation in the urban century. Nature Sustainability, Volume 2, 2019, pp. 267-273.
  28. ↑ See e.g. B. Barbara Weig: Resilience of complex regional systems: Brunsbüttel between lock-in and learning processes. Springer, 2016.
  29. ↑ Bengt-Åke Lundvall, Bjorn Johnson: The Learning Economy. in: Industry and Innovation 1 (1994) 2, pp. 23-42.
  30. ↑ Stefan Voßschmidt, Andreas Karsten (ed.): Resilience and critical infrastructures: Maintaining supply structures in the event of a crisis. Kohlhammer, 2020.
  31. ↑ Stress test city - how resilient are our cities? , BBSR, Bonn 2018.
  32. ^ CL Redman, AP Kinzig: Resilience of past landscapes: Resilience theory, society, and the Longue Durée. In: Conservation Ecology, 7 (1) 2003, Article 14.
  33. ^ Robin Peters: Demographic-cultural cycles in the Neolithic. Master thesis. University of Cologne, 2011. In: Archaeological Information. 35 (2012), pp. 327-335.
  34. ↑ DFG Research Group 2539 "Resilience. Phases of Social Change in the Dialogue between Medieval Studies and Sociology"
  35. ^ Martin Endress: The Social Constructedness of Resilience . In: Social Sciences . tape 4 , 2015, p. 533-545 ( mdpi.com ).
  36. ↑ KE Weick, KM Sutcliffe: Managing the unexpected: assuring high performance in an age of complexity. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2001.
  37. ↑ A. Gebauer, U. Kiehl-Dixon: Enabling the no to personal perception - dealing with extreme situations by building organizational skills. In: Journal of Organizational Development. No. 3/2009. Düsseldorf, pp. 40-49.
  38. ↑ Fathi, K. (2016): What helps managers to build resilience in themselves and in the collective? In: Roehl, H. / Asselmeyer, H. (ed.): Organizations smart. Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag: 301-310
  39. ↑ Bürkner 2010, p. 24 ff.
  40. ↑ See Savitch 2008
  41. ↑ For Switzerland cf. The concept of resilience: present and future. CSS Analyzes in Security Policy No. 142. ETH Zurich 2013. [4]
  42. ↑ For Germany cf. Klaus Thoma (Hrsg.): Resilience-by-Design: Strategy for the technological future topics. German Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech study April 2014, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
  43. ↑ Thomas Gebauer: Resilience and neo-liberal personal responsibility. Lecture, Berlin 2015 [5]

literature