Community resilience: path dependency, lock-in effects and transitional ruptures

Abstract

Adopting a framework based on ‘social resilience', this paper analyses path dependency in community resilience, with a specific emphasis on endogenous pathways of change. Path dependencies are shaped by ‘lock-in’ effects which shoehorn communities into positive or negative pathways of change. Of particular importance are ‘structural lock-in effects’, ‘economic lock-in effects’ and ‘socio-psychological lock-ins’ which make certain community pathways impossible to implement, and can be severe hindrances for raising community resilience. Community transitions are usually not linear, but can be characterised by ‘transitional ruptures’ where the quality of resilience is abruptly changed (positively or negatively).

Keywords:

• community resilience
• path dependency
• lock-in effects
• transitional ruptures
• adaptive capacity

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the following people for constructive and often challenging discussions on issues raised in this paper: Claire Kelly, Eleni Briassoulis, Olivia Wilson, Ian Bailey, James Sidaway, Peter Wilson, Jonathan Rigg, and his PhD students working on issues of resilience: Andrew Fox, Wendy Miller, Huw Thomas and Michiel Curfs. Thanks are also due to the three anonymous reviewers for very constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. See Tönnies (1963) for a detailed discussion of the conceptual differences between ‘society' and ‘community'.

2. Indeed, as Bulkeley (2006) highlighted, super-globalised communities can also develop their own ‘social capital' based on global networks of interaction and trust that will be qualitatively different (but not necessarily weaker) than that of traditional local communities.