Journeys, plants and dreams: Adaptive learning and social -ecological resilience

This dissertation presents a number of linked essays that chronicle my journey to understand the dynamics of social-ecological resilience. The Resilience Alliance has proposed that the resilience of social-ecological systems has three defining characteristics: (1) the amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure, or still be in the same state, within the same domain of attraction; (2) the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization; and (3) the ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation.;This dissertation focuses on the last of the characteristics noted by the Resilience Alliance: the ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation. The central problem addressed by this dissertation is the process of adaptive learning as a process of social-ecological systems. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to address this gap in the literature by suggesting a model of adaptive learning that situates individual learning into a social-ecological environment structured by institutions of knowledge and leading to institutional change.;I propose that adaptive learning as a process of social-ecological resilience is founded upon two key institutions. First, an institution that places learning into a social-ecological environment and requires that knowledge emerge from experience within that environment. This mechanism of feedback linkages allows individual creativity to respond to the dynamics of social-ecological systems and lead to a stream of innovation. Second, an institution that authorizes individual creativity. In the cases examined here, elders are authoritative through their experience on the land and can authorize learning processes. This provides the mechanism for individual creativity to lead to institutional development and changes in social memory. These two institutions of knowledge link innovation to the dynamics of social-ecological systems while maintaining the continuity between the past and the future. It is this process that allows indigenous peoples to write their histories into the cultural landscapes that sustain their survival as a people over time. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).