Enacting Resilience: A Performative Account of Governing for Urban Resilience. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wagenaar, Hendrik; Wilkinson, Cathy
• Other Names: Wilkinson Cathy guest-editor.; Parnell Sue guest-editor.; Beilin Ruth guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Urban studies. Volume 52:Number 7(2015:May)
• Page Start: 1265
• Page End: 1284
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: biodiversity -- Melbourne -- practice -- social-ecological resilience -- strategic environmental assessment -- strategic spatial planning -- urban governance; Cities and towns -- Periodicals; City planning -- Periodicals; 307.1216
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098013505655
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0042-0980

Abstract

Resilience is an increasingly important urban policy discourse that has been taken up at a rapid pace. Yet there is an apparent gap between the advocacy of social-ecological resilience in scientific literature and its take-up in policy discourse on the one hand, and the demonstrated capacity to govern for resilience in practice on the other. This paper explores this gap by developing a performative account of how social-ecological resilience is dealt with in practice through case study analysis of how protection of biodiversity was negotiated in response to Melbourne's recent metropolitan planning initiative. It is suggested that a performative account expands the possible opportunities for governing for social-ecological resilience beyond the concept's use as a metaphor, measurement, cognitive frame or programmatic statement of adaptive management/co-management and has the potential to emerge through what has been called the everyday 'mangle of practice' in response to social-ecological feedback inherent to policy processes.