ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the social in social-ecological systems effects system dynamics. It looks at how late modernity has come to see nature as bound within society rather than as an external frontier. The chapter explains how the social can act as a source of system inertia as actors constantly steer the system to maintain stasis; how this raises tensions within the system as competing discourse coalitions argue differing change responses. It considers how resource use futures are imagined in social-ecological systems where those researching and making decisions are bound within the system. Resilience thinking is a useful tool in understanding sustainability and change in resource use social-ecological systems. The process of induced innovation in wood production is consistent with the Boserup theory of agricultural production. Achieving sustainability requires confronting social systems with strong inbuilt resistance to certain change, while the nature of sustainability is itself being continually reinvented.
