Criticizing resilience thinking
A political ecology analysis of droughts in nineteenth-century East Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2048946 |
|---|---|
| Authors | N Thomas Håkansson, N Håkansson (University of Kentucky, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 7-20 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economic Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2330-4847 • E-ISSN: 2330-4847 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/sea2.12127 |
| OpenAlex | W2895967399 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 36 |
The looming alteration in climate has spurred a veritable industry over the past two decades of overly simplistic scenario modeling and theoretical predictions of future changes brought about by global warming, some based on research on human responses to fluctuations in rainfall and temperature in the past. Scholars who stress the complexity of climate and social processes have critiqued such crude models from two different approaches: resilience thinking and political ecology. In this article, I assess the resilience framework through an analysis of the effects of droughts over a long time perspective, between circa 1800 and 1950, in two East African communities: the Kamba of Kenya and the Gogo of Tanzania. My conclusion is that political ecology theory provides a better explanation than the resilience approach. In both cases, rather than primarily adapting to climate events, the ability of communities and households to cope with droughts varied depending on how they were integrated into regional economies and the world system when those droughts occurred. The effects of droughts and long-term fluctuations in precipitation were mediated through exchange networks, the flow of currencies, and the processes of stratification in local resource control, which in turn affected land use and settlement patterns
Biology · Climate change · Development economics · Ecological resilience · Economics · Ecosystem · Environmental planning · Environmental resource management · Geography · Political ecology · Political science · Politics · Psychological resilience · Tanzania · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Ecology
Natural Language Processing and Information Systems
Adaptation as a Political Process
Land Degradation and Society
Kenyan Communities in the Age of Imperialism
The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation
Climate Change in Southern and Eastern Africa During the Past Millennium and its Implications for Societal Development
Climate Variability and Societal Dynamics in Pre-Colonial Southern African History (AD 900-1840)
Environment, development, crisis, and crusade
Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene
Livelihood Security, Vulnerability and Resilience
Climate and causation in the Swedish Iron Age
Labour and landscapes
Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours During an Eighteen Years' Residence in Eastern Africa
Use of Zanzibar copal (Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertn.) as incense at Unguja Ukuu, Tanzania in the 7–8th century CE
Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar
Mtunya
Tsetse fly in Western Narok, Kenya
Déjà vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature
Resilience
Ethnogenesis and surplus food production
Grain, Cattle, and Power
Resilience and collapse
Adaptive cycles in the savannah
Developing Landscape Historical Ecologies in Eastern Africa
The Human Ecology of World Systems in East Africa
| Citations per year | 0.43 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2023 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |