ANTH 561F/SEFS 550F
Resilience in Socio-Ecological Systems

MW 1:30-3:20, Denny 401

Course Home
Course Requirements
Class Project
E-mail the class
Discussion Board

READINGS
1. Key Concepts
2. Key Concepts Cont.
3. Sustainability
4. China Example
5. Commons
6. Anthropology
7. Management
8. Critiques
9. Resonances


RESOURCES
The Resilience Alliance
Ecology and Society

Class Schedule: Week 2, Key Concepts Continued

Monday, April 8: We will continue with the next three chapters of Panarchy (chapters 4-6, pp. 103-173), which deal with some of the reasons why social systems and ecological systems are best examined in tandem. By 10:00 a.m. please post two questions arising from these chapters. We will continue as we did the previous Wednesday, taking off from your questions to examine the concepts and their use in specific contexts.

Wednesday, April 10: We move from general concepts to models, and explore the models used by resilience theorists in light of the general theory of model-building and the "modeler's dilemma," as laid out in Richard Levins's "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology." You should first read Levins's article. Then a group of you will be assigned to read, in addition, a pair of the articles below, and by 10:00 a.m please post a 200-300 word commentary on how the types of models employed in your pair of articles deals with the issues raised by Levins. In class, we will first discuss the implications of Levins's model of models in general, and then the members of each group will present a 5-10 minute summary of the issues in modeling raised by your articles; these summaries should lead into general discussions of these issues.

Group 1: General models of adaptive cycles,
  • Donald Ludwig, Brian H. Walker, and C.S. Holling. 2002. Models and Metaphors of Sustainability, Stability, and Resilience, in Gunderson and Pritchard, eds., Resilience and the Behavior of Large-Scale Systems (Washington, D.C: Island Press), pp. .
  • Stephen R. Carpenter, William A. Brock, and Donald Ludwig, Collapse, Learning, and Renewal, chapter 7 of Panarchy.
Group 2: How social systems and ecosystems fit together
  • Marten Scheffer, Frances Westley, William A. Brock, and Milena Holmgren, Dynamic Interaction of Societies and Ecosystems, chapter 8 of Panarchy.
  • Thomas Abel. 2007. World Systems as Complex Human Ecosystems. In Alf Hornborg and Carole Crumley, ads, Tlhe World System and the Earth System (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press), pp. 56-73.
Group 3: Thresholds and systems shifts