Resilience

Definition

James Cascio:

"Resilience means the capacity of an entity--such as a person, an 
institution, or a system--to withstand sudden, unexpected shocks, 
and (ideally) to be capable of recovering quickly afterwards. 
Resilience implies both strength and flexibility; a resilient 
structure would bend, but would be hard to break." (http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)

Description

Alex Evans and David Steven:

"In formal terms, resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks. (Walker et al, 2004)

Perhaps the best practical definition we have come across is the one offered by the Harvard Business Review. It states that resilience results from being able to face up to reality, improvise in the face of unfamiliar challenges, and at the same time find a source of ‘meaning’ in the challenges that encourages long-term thinking while affirming a sustaining sense of purpose (Coutu, 2002).

Both definitions emphasise the need to change while maintaining a coherent identity. Systems that are brittle, that try to remain static at all costs, are precisely the ones that are most vulnerable to collapse. On the other hand, systems that are flexible, adaptable, that deal with crisis through renewal are the ones that will tend to survive. This is, in other words, a classic collective action problem. The central determinant of a system’s resilience is the ability to act collectively, coherently, and with the right balance between short and long-term interests.

In a high resilience system, risk – and response to that risk – is distributed throughout the system. Individuals and their groups see their interests as compatible with the collective. They have a common understanding of the challenges a society faces and take decisions accordingly, but this understanding is not a straitjacket. Different actors play to the strengths and will often compete fiercely. But there is a balance between initiative and co-ordination, and broad buy-in to overarching institutional frameworks.

In a low resilience system, on the other hand, risks are felt disproportionately by some groups and responses are inadequate, over-centralised, or both. Longer-term interests are heavily discounted, individuals pursue narrow self-interest; and conflict between groups intensifies. As a result, key institutions are increasingly seen as failing to ‘deliver’." (http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf)

Characteristics

James Cascio:

• "Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a 
system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single 
part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes 
from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), 
collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized 
from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively 
respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected 
loss of components.

• The recognition that failure happens is the other intrinsic part of a 
resilience approach. Mistakes, malice, pure coincidence--there's no 
way to rule out all possible ways in which a given system can stumble. 
The goal, therefore, should be to make failures easy to spot through 
widespread adoption of transparency through a "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" embrace of 
openness, and to give the system enough redundancy and slack that it's 
possible to absorb the failures that get through. If you know that you 
can't rule out failure, you need to be able to "fail gracefully," in 
the language of design.
"

(http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)

Discussion

Towards a politics of resilience

Alex Evans and David Steven:

"The politics of resilience, then, presents a challenging agenda – one that takes us far beyond how well we respond to localised natural disasters.

In a complex and unstable world, it helps join up our thinking about a series of disparate challenges and provides a clear rationale for collective action. As Robert Cooper has argued: ‘If states are to retain control, the first condition is that they should make peace with each other so that they can face the common threat of disorder together’ (Cooper, 2003).

Facing common threats will require much more than goodwill, however. At present, all arms of international relations are in crisis. Military forces are struggling to understand a world where war is usually ‘amongst the people’, to use Rupert Smith’s phrase (Smith, 2005). Development agencies are having to accept that poverty reduction cannot simply be accomplished by the transfer of resources. Many diplomatic services, meanwhile, badly need to renew their ‘theory of influence’ in a world where issues trump geography, and non-state actors are an increasingly powerful force. Fundamental reform cannot happen in one country alone.

Instead governments need to work together to develop approaches that are integrated and interoperable. The starting point is greater ‘shared awareness’ of the nature of the threats that accompany globalisation, and an honest admission of the limits to government power (Evans and Steven, 2008). This should then encourage governments to reach out in two directions – upwards towards the international system, and downwards towards the world’s citizens.

But this is not simply a neutral question of governance; it is also a fundamentally political agenda. The politics of resilience holds both good and bad news for all major streams of political thinking: conservative, liberal and social democratic.

For conservatives, resilience’s appeal to tradition and identity is a strong one. However, the conservative instinct to resist change of all kinds is a clear threat to a system’s ability to adapt. Two quotes from the conservative philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, capture this dichotomy well. On the one hand, he writes that: In place of a preconceived purpose … such a society will find its guide in a principle of continuity (which is a diffusion of power between past, present and future) and in a principle of consensus (which is a diffusion of power between the different legitimate interests of the present).

On the other:

Change is a threat to identity, and every change is an emblem of extinction … Changes, then, have to be suffered, and a man of conservative temperament (that is, one strongly disposed to preserve his identity) cannot be indifferent to them. (Oakeshott, 1991)

Liberals, meanwhile, have long argued for the diffusion of power. As Hayek argued, centralised control is not possible over systems ‘which no brain has designed but which [have] grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals’ (Hayek, 1974). He, after all, was awarded a Nobel prize over thirty years ago for his ‘penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena’. Classical liberalism, however, has consistently been troubled by government attempts to create public goods. The result is an instinctive opposition to regulation, which leaves little room for attempts to manage unstable global systems.

Social democrats, finally, understand the importance of public goods and are prepared to act forcefully to protect the vulnerable. They are also willing to act boldly to manage global instability. However, they have the weakness of being instinctive meddlers, crowding out the initiative of other actors and risking over-centralisation in the face of distributed risks. This is a time when states will be under pressure to take on new, and onerous, responsibilities, such as taking responsibility for regulating carbon and other scarce resources. Unprecedented institutional innovation will be needed if these responsibilities are to be discharged without imposing unsustainable levels of cost. It is surely therefore time to put the ‘nanny state’ out of her misery, while we search for a more sustainable relationship between government and state.

In the end, resilience is about a politics that is ‘progressive’ in a pure sense. Rather than following the ideological imprint of a bygone age, we need to be prepared to take a broad view of the systems that we depend on – and re-order our priorities to ensure that every action we take helps strengthen and defend them. That takes courage, and a farsighted vision of the future. The question is not ‘what risks do we want to avoid?’ but ‘what do we want to be resilient for?’" (http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf)

Source

1. Risks and resilience in the new global era. By Alex Evans and David Steven. Renewal Vol. 17, No.1

URL = http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf

More Information

See John Robb's proposition for Resilient Communities

Also:

1. Coutu, D. L. (2003) ‘How Resilience Works’ in Harvard Business Review on Building Personal

and Organizational Resilience, Boston, Harvard Business School Press.

1. Tainter, J. (1988) The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
2. Walker, B. et al (2004) ‘Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological

Systems’ in Ecology and Society 9 (2) Art 5.

1. Walker, B. and Salt, D. (2006) Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a

Changing World, Washington, Island Press.