The Transformative Potential of Resilience Thinking: How It Could Transform Unsustainable Economic Rationalities

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate in the research literature on whether the neoliberal economic rationalities permeating public administration, policy, and governance across much of the world provide the means necessary for promoting sustainable development. Parallel to this debate, it has been suggested that resilience thinking, a notion with growing policy importance, could either reproduce the neoliberal mainstream or challenge it at its core, depending on the modes of resilience thinking emerging from practice. Taking the position that new economic rationalities are needed, this study examines how transformative modes of resilience thinking that emerge from practice create tensions that can support a transformation toward the economic rationalities of the so-called doughnut economics, an alternative economic model that outlines a vision and a path toward ecological and social sustainability.