ABSTRACT
The concept of ‘resilience’ was refined within systems ecology in the 1970s, as equilibrium concepts yielded to the far-from-equilibrium ontology of complex systems theory. Resilience has since become a pervasive concept in risk management in financial, environmental and security policy, reflecting a consensus on the limits to prediction and the necessity of adaptation through crisis. Whilst ‘resilience’ can be directly traced to the ecologist Crawford Holling, its contemporary institutionalisation is explained by its resonance with Friedrich Hayek’s mature neoliberal philosophy. The generalisation of complexity theory as strategy has ambivalent sources, reflecting its own trajectory from critique to a methodology of power.
