International Journal of Peace Studies
Abstract
The concept of resilience is currently making its way into the field of peace and conflict studies, but it is a concept with different meanings and implications. The argument advanced in this paper is that in order to make the most of resilience thinking, the field should not conceive of resilience merely as the ability to bounce back to an original state after a disturbance, a conceptualization usually referred to as “engineering resilience.” Instead, it should engage with “ecological resilience,” which refers to the amount of disturbance that a system can absorb before being pushed across a threshold from one stable state to another. I also relate these different types of resilience to another distinction between specified resilience to anticipated disturbances and general resilience to unknown ones. Finally I consider a few other implications of resilience thinking for research on peace and conflict.
Recommended Citation
Johansson, Patrik
(2018)
"Resilience Thinking for Peacebuilders,"
International Journal of Peace Studies: Vol. 23:
No.
2, Article 3.
Available at:
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/ijps/vol23/iss2/3
