This article defines social resilience as the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental change. This definition highlights social resilience in relation to the concept of ecological resilience which is a characteristic of ecosystems to maintain themselves in the face of disturbance. There is a clear link between social and ecological resilience, particularly for social groups or communities that are dependent on ecological and environmental resources for their livelihoods. But it is not clear whether resilient ecosystems enable resilient communities in such situations. This article examines whether resilience is a useful characteristic for describing the social and economic situation of social groups and explores potential links between social resilience and ecological resilience. The origins of this interdisciplinary study in human ecology, ecological economics and rural sociology are reviewed, and a study of the impacts of ecological change on a resource- dependent community in contemporary coastal Vietnam in terms of the resilience of its institu- tions is outlined. I Introduction The concept of resilience is widely used in ecology but its meaning and measurement are contested. This article argues that it is important to learn from this debate and to explore social resilience, both as an analogy of how societies work, drawing on the ecological concept, and through exploring the direct relationship between the two phenomena of social and ecological resilience. Social resilience is an important component of the circumstances under which individuals and social groups adapt to environmental change. Ecological and social resilience may be linked through the dependence on ecosystems of communities and their economic activities. The question is, then, whether societies dependent on resources and ecosystems are themselves less resilient. In addition, this analysis allows consideration of whether institutions

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Social and Ecological Resilience: Are They Related?

This paper develops a theoretical perspective on institutional adaptation to social vulnerability to environmental risks. Institutions encompass both socialized ways of interacting and underlying worldviews, as well as structures and organizations that influence resource allocation. The adaptation of institutions that mediate vulnerability to environmental change can be observed by examining actual resource allocations and the processes of decisionmaking and nondecisionmaking, as well as by examining changing perceptions of vulnerability. Institutional adaptation is evaluated in Nam Dinh Province in northern Vietnam, a country presently undergoing rapid economic and political transition. The case study highlights local-level institutional adaptation to environmental risks associated with flooding and typhoon impacts in the coastal environment. It is carried out through fieldwork involving qualitative household surveys and interviewing to elicit present and recent coping and adaptation strategies in the co...

Institutional Adaptation to Environmental Risk under the Transition in Vietnam

Microcredit, Social Capital, and Common Pool Resources

Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. WEBB KEANE. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997; 297 pp. (paper). Anakalang is a dry, out of the way place in West Sumba, Eastern Indonesia. Here, where subsistence agriculture is the norm, neither trade nor wages play much part in people's lives. Local affairs take place in a realm largely untouched by the reach of the Indonesian state. Although most people have converted to Christianity within the last thirty years, and warfare and the headhunting that went with it have been in abeyance since the colonial era, violence and bravado still command men's image of themselves, and ancestor spirits remain important. This is where Webb Keane carried out fieldwork in the 1980s and '90s, trying to understand exchanges, formal speech, and feasting. In his remarkable and ambitious ethnography, he makes these esoteric subjects speak to general theories of representation. The result is a critique both of those approaches that treat culture as a text or as disembodied discourse and of those that lean toward economic or material reductionism. Further, Keane shows that agency is not only something individuals exercise, but also a property of groups. The main actors in formal transactions are the corporate patrilineal descent groups called kabisu and their segments known as "houses." High status kabisu, some of which constitute a nobility, assert claims as village founders, and possess ancestral heirlooms and villages with stone tombs and dancing platforms where they sponsor great feasts. Asymmetrical alliance characterizes the pattern of marriage among kabisu, with, ideally, at least one marriage each generation renewing the affinal bond. Nonetheless, long-standing affines construe each other as antagonists and constantly scrutinize the objects and words they exchange in ceremonial contexts as either a recognition of honor or grounds for offence. The ethnography sticks mostly to formal settings such as marriage negotiations, where the predominant speakers are generally not themselves party to the exchanges or decisions that occur, but merely the delegated voices of the principals. Adepts of ritual speaking lace their talk with the couplets that are a hallmark of this region and that Anakalangese regard as a legacy from an ancestral golden era. The stylized expressions bracket an event as efficacious or definitive, for this was the manner in which ancestors spoke. Much speaking in ritual events also consists of highly redundant messages relayed by go-betweens, reports and repetitions of what others have said. This agency-blurring practice, and the replicability of utterances among different speakers, Keane argues, displace utterances from persons and bespeak the transcendent authority of ancestors. Keane explores at length the implicit logic of speaking in pairs. A couplet says the same thing in two different ways, and also points to an unstated, third possibility: a gloss in colloquial speech. Couplets as a poetic device thus evince a general process of displacement where signs point to something not actually there, a semantic center that is only presupposed. Displacement is also evident in behaviors relating to slavery. …

Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society

Recent archaeological investigations along the lower Negro and upper Xingu Rivers in the Brazilian Amazon provide important new evidence bearing on long-standing debates about the size and permanence of Amerindian settlements in the region. Preliminary regional surveys and more in-depth study of selected large (30-50 ha) sites, particularly analyses of the associations between structural features, anthropogenically altered soils, and artifact distributions, lead us to conclude that large, permanent settlements, likely associated with fairly dense regional populations, existed prehistorically in both areas. These findings cast doubt on the view that environmental limitations prevented sedentism and demographic growth among Amerindian populations throughout much or all of the region. Specifically, we conclude that fully sedentary and relatively large populations emerged in a variety of Amazonian settings prehistorically, not necessarily correlated with the distribution of one or another narrowly defined ecological variable (e. g., high fertility soils). Thus, a critical evaluation of core concepts in Amazonian anthropology, such as the varzea/terra firme dichotomy or tropical forest culture, is advised.

Village Size and Permanence in Amazonia: Two Archaeological Examples from Brazil

The authors consider the ways in which the high degree of ethnic diversity within the region is related to the nature of tropical Asian environments, on the one hand, and the nature of Southeast Asian political systems and the ways in which they manipulate natural resources, on the other. Rather than focus on defining the phenomenon of ethnicity, this book examines the different social evolutionary contexts in which the phenomenon is manifested. Companion volume to Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia (Michigan Papers no. 27)

Ethnic Diversity and the Control of Natural Resources in Southeast Asia

Too many people, too little land : the human ecology of a wet rice-growing village in the Red River Delta of Vietnam

Profiles in Cultural Evolution

Acknowledgments Maps Introduction Part I Fluid Personhood: Conceptualizing Identities 1. Living in Indonesia with No Pleases or Thanks / Lorraine Aragon 2. Toba Batak Selves: Personal, Spiritual, Collective / Andrew Causey 3. Poverty and Merit: Mobile Persons in Laos / Holly High 4. A Question of Identity: Different Ways of Being Malay and Muslim in Malaysia / Judith Nagata Part II Family, Household and Livelihoods 5. Maling: A Hanunoo Girl from the Philippines / Harold Conklin 6. Marriage and Opium in a Lisu Village in Northern Thailand / Kathleen Gillogly 7. Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order / Lucien M. Hanks, Jr. Part III Crafting the Nation-State 8. Recording Tradition and Measuring Progress in the Ethnic Minority Highlands of Thailand / Hjorleifur Jonsson 9. Everyday Life and the Management of Cultural Complexity in Contemporary Singapore / John Clammer 10. Youth Culture and Fading Memories of War in Hanoi, Vietnam / Christina Schwenkel Part IV World Religions in Everyday Life: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity 11. The Ordination of a Tree: The Buddhist Ecology Movement in Thailand / Sue Darlington 12. Javanese Women and the Veil / Nancy Smith-Hefner 13. Everyday Catholicism: Opening up Spaces of New Religious Experience in the Philippines / Katharine L. Wiegele Part V Communicating Ideas: Popular Culture, Arts and Entertainment 14. Cultivating "Community" in an Indonesian Era of Conflict: Toraja Artistic Strategies for Promoting Peace / Kathleen M. Adams 15. The Fall of Thai Rocky / Pattana Kitiarsa 16. Everyday Life as Art: Thai Artists and the Aesthetics of Shopping, Eating, and Just Living / Sandra Cate 17. Eating Lunch and Recreating the Universe: Food and Cosmology in Hoi An, Vietnam / Nir Avieli Part VI War and Recovery 18. Living with the War Dead in Vietnam / Shaun Malarney 19. Producing the People: Exchange Obligations and Popular Nationalism / Betsy Traube 20. The Question of the Collaborators: Moral Order and Community in the Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge / Eve Monique Zucker Part VII Global Processes and Shifting Ecological Relations 21. When the Mountains No Longer Mean Home / Chris Lyttleton 22. They Do Not Like To Be Confined And Told What To Do": Schooling Malaysian Indigenes / Robert Knox Dentan, Anthony (Bah Tony) Williams-Hunt and Bah Juli Edo 23. Narratives of Agency: Sex Work in Indonesia's Borderlands / Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons 24. Just Below the Surface: Environmental Destruction and Loss of Livelihood on an Indonesian Atoll / Gene Ammarell Selected Film Resources Contributors Index

Kathleen Gillogly

Papers

Ethnic Diversity and the Control of Natural Resources in Southeast Asia

Too many people, too little land : the human ecology of a wet rice-growing village in the Red River Delta of Vietnam

Profiles in Cultural Evolution

Everyday Life in Southeast Asia

Agroecosystems of the Midlands of Northern Vietnam : A Report on a Preliminary Human Ecology Field Study of the Three Districts in Vinh Phu Province