Disturbance, response, and persistence in self-organized forested communities: Analysis of robustness and resilience in five communities in Southern Indiana
Abstract
We develop an analytic framework for the analysis of robustness in social-ecological
systems (SESs) over time. We argue that social robustness is affected by the disturbances
that communities face and the way they respond to them. Using Ostrom's ontological
framework for SESs, we classify the major factors influencing the disturbances and
responses faced by five Indiana intentional communities over a 15-year time frame.
Our empirical results indicate that operational and collective-choice rules, leadership
and entrepreneurship, monitoring and sanctioning, economic values, number of users,
and norms/social capital are key variables that need to be at the core of future theoretical
work on robustness of self-organized systems. © 2010 by the author(s).
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6509Collections
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Xavier Basurto
Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor
I am interested in the fundamental question of how groups (human and non-human) can
find ways to self-organize, cooperate, and engage in successful collective action
for the benefit of the common good. To do this I strive to understand how the institutions
(formal and informal rules and norms) that govern social behavior, interplay with
biophysical variables to shape social-ecological systems. What kind of institutions
are better able to govern complex-adaptive systems? and how can societies (la

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