What makes communities resilient in times of complexity and change?

Abstract

This introduction to the Special Issue problematises the necessity to rethink governance through the lens of resilience and suggests a novel conceptualisation of resilience. Building the argument on complexity-thinking, this issue contends that in the context of change and complex life, challenges are most efficiently dealt with, at the source, ‘locally’, to make ‘the global’ more sustainable. Accordingly, the concept of resilience as self-governance is advanced in the introduction as an overriding framework to explore its constitutive elements—identity, ‘good life’, local coping strategies and support infrastructures—which, when mobilised, can turn community into ‘peoplehood’ in the face of adversity. This conceptualisation, we argue, explains what makes communities adapt and transform, and how they should be governed today. Central Eurasia, spanning from Belarus in the west, to Azerbaijan in the south and Tajikistan in the east, provides fertile grounds for exploring how resilience works in practice in times of complex change. By immersing into centuries-long traditions and philosophy, local experiences of survival, and visions for change, this introduction—along with the Special Issue—shows that governability at any level requires a substantive ‘local’ input to make ‘the global’ more enduring and resilient in a complex adaptive world.