Development and Current Status of Social Resilience Framework: Challenges in Macro Analysis

    The term "resilience" originates from the Latin word "resilire," meaning "to bounce back" (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013). It initially emerged in the field of ecological systems, referring to the ability of ecosystems to maintain their structure and function despite external disturbances (Holling, 1973). The concept of resilience flourished in disaster relief, exploring how disaster-affected areas could utilize resources to absorb the impacts of disasters, recover, and even prevent harm. As the concept of resilience diffuses across various academic disciplines, amidst increasingly diverse social risks, there is a need for strengthening resilience in various aspects of society, such as environmental resilience, democratic resilience, economic resilience, and so forth. In the construction and measurement of resilience indicators in different domains, the resilience indicators face various challenges during development. This article attempts to share insights into the current development and challenges of resilience research observed in the process of constructing macro-level resilience indicators, starting from the concept of social resilience.

    Similar to the origins of resilience, past research or theoretical frameworks related to social resilience have mostly focused on disaster risk reduction studies (Cutter et al., 2010; Keck & Sakdapolrak, 2013; Obrist et al., 2010; Saja et al., 2018; Saja et al., 2019; Copeland et al., 2020). Scholars have provided various definitions of social resilience, with a broader definition being "the capacity of actors to acquire resources to respond and adapt to adversity (i.e., responsiveness), and to seek and create options (i.e., proactivity), thereby developing the ability to enhance outcomes when faced with threats (i.e., positive outcomes)" (Obrist et al., 2010). Under such a definition, social resilience is considered as a capacity, rather than a fixed trait.

    Additionally, some scholars differentiate social resilience into three capacities (Keck & Sakdapolrak, 2013). Firstly, coping capacity, which refers to the ability of social actors to confront and overcome various adversities, enabling them to return to their pre-impact state within a short period (Obrist, 2010; Béné et al., 2012). Secondly, adaptive capacity, which involves learning from past experiences and engaging in prevention and long-term planning to address future risks (Obrist, 2010; Béné et al., 2012). Thirdly, transformative capacity entails strategically leveraging the assets accessible to civil society, government, and other sectors to establish mechanisms that promote well-being and sustainability, thereby addressing future crises. It emphasizes the participation of system members and is also referred to as participatory capacity (Voss, 2008; Lorenz, 2010). Transformative capacity emphasizes the pursuit of a new normal, elevating resilience from its earliest conservative and passive perspective of maintaining stability and returning to the original state to a dynamic process of system adaptation and transformation (Bourbeau, 2018). Thus, while the academic community studying social resilience may contend with different perspectives on its definition, a certain consensus has been reached. However, in terms of defining social resilience at the community level, a dilemma arises when measuring resilience levels. On one hand, we hope that communities can maintain characteristics deemed resilient, but at the same time, we also hope that communities possess the ability to transform in the face of adversity. This is referred to as the fundamental duality of the resilience concept (Copeland et al., 2023).

    In terms of the progression of research themes, disaster relief currently dominates the mainstream perspective of resilience research, primarily following two streams of studies. The first stream focuses on specific types of disasters and small-scale communities, such as those studying floods (Qasim et al., 2016), hurricanes (Burton, 2015), and earthquakes (Ainuddin et al., 2015). The second one involves an increasing number of studies aiming to generalize social resilience frameworks, hoping to develop frameworks applicable to complex disasters (multi-hazard). For instance, Saja et al. (2019) conducted a systematic review of frameworks related to social resilience and found that out of 31 theoretical frameworks, as many as 22 were developed with a background in multiple hazards. However, these frameworks mostly focus on single-country research contexts, lacking cross-regional comparability.

    In addition to the framework of disaster prevention, fields such as psychology and sociology often develop related scales to measure individual psychological resilience (Lock et al., 2020). This includes studies focusing on specific populations or families as the core concern, measuring family resilience. However, measurements at the individual level are not suitable for macro analysis. For example, research on individual psychological resilience focuses on assessing psychological activities under individual encounters, such as coping and self-efficacy (Vella, 2019). The measurement mechanism of individual psychological resilience involves stress assessment and other neuroscience mechanisms, making it difficult to reflect the structural tensions and interactions among the state, government, market mechanisms, and civil society. This hinders policy intervention aiming to enhance the country's resilience. In short, individual resilience cannot be aggregated into national resilience or serve as the basis for policy recommendations.

    In summary, research on social resilience can be classified into studies focusing on specific contexts and those based on general frameworks. The former includes research on specific types of disasters, particular community levels, or specific geographic locations (such as rural areas, urban areas, coastal regions, mountainous areas, or islands). The latter typically revolves around key components of social resilience, such as "social capital," "adaptation and transformation capacity," "social connections," and "structure and cognition" (Saja et al., 2019). Recent research on social resilience has diversified, moving from singular disaster types to more versatile community-level social resilience. However, there is currently no widely applicable framework for analyzing macro-level national issues. This suggests that the concept of social resilience itself is broad and challenging to define. Discussions on specific topics are often constrained by domain knowledge traditions, making it difficult to transcend the framework of disasters and discuss the impacts and resilience at the national level. Therefore, closer interdisciplinary knowledge integration is needed to overcome these limitations.

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