Societal resilience – Clarifying the concept and upscaling the scope

Abstract

This reflection piece explores societal resilience as an emerging field in safety science research. Based on the growing interest for safety in a societal context – and the natural continuation of the expanding scope of each of the phases in the ‘three ages of safety’ – societal resilience is portrayed as a fourth age of safety. While safety science through the decades has developed steadily, providing many different, complementary perspectives, theories and models for human, technical and organisational aspects of safety and resilience, the research on societal safety and resilience is less mature, and does not yet enjoy the same theoretical repertoire as organisational safety. Second, the reflection piece explores the possibilities for approaching resilience as a systemic trait. While there is a tradition to address resilience at the scale of individuals/teams and organisations, resilience – with its root metaphors derived from ecological systems – could also be addressed at the societal or global scale, and this reflection piece explores the translation of resilience from the organisational to the systemic realm. In doing so, the dominating scope of critical infrastructures in contemporary societal safety research is challenged. It is argued that societal resilience research should go beyond critical infrastructures and the national/inter-organisational scope, to explore the shaping of risks in the Anthropocene, including such risks as climate change and global migration, across networks of livelihood-, scientific- and political practices.