Panarchy: ripples of a boundary concept

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and application of the Panarchy concept in social-ecological systems, analyzing its usage, extensions, and empirical grounding over nearly two decades using qualitative and machine learning methods.

Contribution

It combines qualitative analysis and machine learning to systematically review how Panarchy has been used, tested, and extended in scientific literature.

Findings

Adaptive cycle is the most studied feature of Panarchy.

Challenges exist in empirically grounding the Panarchy metaphor.

Recent work provides avenues for future empirical research.

Abstract

How do social-ecological systems change over time? In 2002 Holling and colleagues proposed the concept of Panarchy, which presented social-ecological systems as an interacting set of adaptive cycles, each of which is produced by the dynamic tensions between novelty and efficiency at multiple scales. Initially introduced as a conceptual framework and set of metaphors, panarchy has gained the attention of scholars across many disciplines and its ideas continue to inspire further conceptual developments. Almost twenty years after this concept was introduced we review how it has been used, tested, extended and revised. We do this by combining qualitative methods and machine learning. Document analysis was used to code panarchy features that are commonly used in the scientific literature (N = 42), a qualitative analysis that was complemented with topic modeling of 2177 documents. We find that the adaptive cycle is the feature of panarchy that has attracted the most attention. Challenges remain in empirically grounding the metaphor, but recent theoretical and empirical work offers some avenues for future research.