An Analysis of Resilience in Complex Socioeconomic Systems

The notion of resilience originated in the ecology literature in the modern or post-World War II era. Even so, this term has now found widespread use in the social sciences in general and in regional science in particular. Although this expansion in the use of resilience is welcome, it isimportant to recognize that there is some ambiguity and confusion in the extant regional scienceliterature about foundational issues and hence also about the nature of policy when resilience is afactor to contend with. Given this state of affairs, in this chapter, we provide a detailed discussionof three foundational and two policy related issues concerning the use of resilience in regionalscience. The three foundational issues are about definitions, whether resilience is a process, andwhether resilience is always a good thing. The two policy issues concern multiple stable states andthe connection between the twin notions of resilience and sustainability. The chapter concludeswith some retrospective and prospective remarks