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Speaker: Angela Wardell-Johnson (Curtin University, Western Australia)

Title: Social Capital: A Complex System with resilience properties.

Abstract:

Social structures that facilitate the exchange of resources and transmission
of knowledge, such as social capital, are adaptive social variables that
contribute to the resilience in a system. Social capital has emergent
characteristics derived from norms of reciprocity, practices of exchange,
social networks and relations of trust. Social capital comprises dynamic
relationships between bridging, bonding and bracing social capital. It is
one of seven interacting capitals but shows characteristics of the strange
attractor and the point of sensitivity.

Resilient systems reflect evolutionary relationships between people and the
biophysical environment. The ideals, ideology and practice frameworks
intrinsic to socio-ecological systems occupy certain parameters within phase
space. These social structures maintain the resilience and constancy of
locally adapted systems. They are not isolated from external driving forces
but protected through the resilient functions of the slow and fast emergent
variables. This capacity cannot be enforced or implemented; it emerges as an
output or result of the process of social capital.

This seminar presents social capital as a complex social system that has
dynamic and non-linear relationships with the economic and ecological
elements of landscape systems. The conceptualisation is derived from
empirically generated research in landscape contexts in rural Australia.

Bio:

Angela is currently a visiting researcher at the Centre for Complexity.
Angela’s role at Curtin University in Western Australia, is as leader in the
Curtin Institute for Biodiversity and Climate for the theme of Integration.
This involves facilitating the development of research relationships between
disciplines, methodologies, practice and theory.

Angela’s key research interests comprise a program of research into the
dynamics and resilient characteristics of complex adaptive social systems.
The social dimensions that form the key theoretical interests in this
research are loosely centred on the social values associated with a sense of
place, associated social capital, and the frameworks that provide a
rationale for decision-making identified as environmental discourse.  This
involves research into the way communities locate themselves philosophically
within a landscape to frame solutions for environmental issues and
biodiversity conservation. Currently this interest has resilience in
socio-ecological landscapes as a key focus.