Abstract
‘Resilience’ has become a US policy goal in the context of disasters ranging from tornadoes to terrorist attacks, whether by domestic or by foreign agents. The meaning of the word, however, remains shrouded in public relations’ wishful thinking with its reassuring sound. Most proponents imply a sociocutural and economic version of a simplistic ‘engineering resilience’ whereby a system bounces back from a perturbation to something much like its original state. Ecological resilience, whereby a system absorbs a perturbation without much visible change – until it doesn’t – may shape destinies more profoundly (Wallace and Wallace 2008). Ecological resilience depends on the tightness of the connections between system components. Systems with tight connections lack ecological resilience and actually amplify perturbations whereas systems with loose connections dampen perturbations (Holling 1973, 1992; Ives 1995). We here examine ecological resilience in the context of US states with and without right-to-work laws and their socioeconomic/public health systems.
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Wallace, D., Wallace, R. (2018). Resilience. In: Right-to-Work Laws and the Crumbling of American Public Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72784-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72784-4_11
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