Construction of Resilience: Divergence and Convergence of Theoretical Models. A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

The concept of resilience has been applied within a wide spectrum of disciplines and has become increasingly relevant for interdisciplinary research. The interdisciplinary use of the concept could be linked to the fact that the conceptualization of resilience is not so much related to a discipline, but rather to the concrete ways of posing a research question. Against this background, the article builds on both conceptual and empirical arguments. At the same time, it explores a collaborative interdisciplinary research network of 13 projects with regard to the used theoretical models, applying a quantitative empirical investigation. The results show that the projects of this network differ when it comes to the theoretical models used. Four different theoretical models could be identified regarding basic concept (structural vs. process-oriented) and context relation (open vs. closed). Moreover, the construction of the theoretical model is strongly related to the specific ways of posing a research question while remaining rooted in a specific discipline.