| |
|
Home Page Requirements Course Schedule Resource Archive Email the Class |
Assignment for Tuesday, October 7Today we plunge headlong into the core texts of the resilience discourse. The temptation on my part is to have us read way more than we can possibly read. Nevertheless, two things seem essential. The first is C.S. Holling's original 1973 article that started the resilience movement, Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. The second is parts I and II (chapters 1-6, pages 3-169) of the "bible" of the resilience movement, Gunderson and Holling's Panarchy. This book is, I suspect, more revered than actually read, because of the density of its chapters. But if we are going to appreciate and, more importantly, try to use, or even more importantly, evaluate its conceptions and insights, we need to know them in their original, difficult, un-dumbed-down form.So go at it. For class, I would propose that we take the chapters one-by-one, devoting 20-30 minutes to each. As we do so, we will attempt to chart, on the whiteboard, the key concepts of each chapter and the way they are connected to each other. In the case of each concept, I will ask you to provide examples that are not among those cited by the authors. This will provide you with the initial practice in using resilience concepts that you will need for your projects later on in the quarter. |