CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Sociological Theory
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1581631
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Resilience in Complex Systems: Transdisciplinary and Systems Approaches to Sustainable Infrastructure and Urban DevelopmentView all 6 articles
xResilience and adaptive capacities of societies: social and cultural strategies
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute for Research on Population and Social Policy, National Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy
- 2Giustino Fortunato University, Benevento, Campania, Italy
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The concept of resilience is a topic that has returned to the forefront of social system analysis, especially with regard to the way in which communities react and how they can be a driving force for social reactivation as a dynamic process involving positive adaptation in the face of significant adversity. Communities have always played a fundamental role in social construction and in the implementation of actions for growth and social regulation. The same relational dynamics determined by the community involve the construction of resilience processes that guide individuals in the manifestation of their choices. The mechanisms that determine community dynamics are provided by social culture, which in turn determines both the mechanisms of resilience and those of social empowerment for community development and the possibility of creating and spreading innovation. This paper aims to analyse the concept of resilience as a social and cultural strategy of a community or group to cope with various social problems. For this reason, the text will be divided into two parts: a first theoretical part where the concept of resilience and its strategies will be defined, and a second part where, through the analysis of case studies on different social issues, we will observe how different communities have reacted and what kind of actions they have taken to restore their social functions through change and adaptation.In recent years, the concept of resilience, especially associated with issues of urban and territorial systems development, as well as the dynamics triggered by the COVID-19 crisis, has been widely disseminated and is a key thought in many international and European policies. In particular, reference to the concept of eco-system resilience is made, understood as the property of complex systems to react to stress phenomena, activating response and adaptation strategies in order to restore functioning mechanisms (Martini, 2025, pp. 52-54).Resilient systems, when faced with stress, react by renewing themselves but maintaining their functionality and recognisability (Gunderson and Holling, 1995;2002). Resilience therefore does not
Keywords: resilience1, community2, Strategy3, innovation4, Networks5
Received: 22 Feb 2025; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cubeddu and Martini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Elvira Martini, Giustino Fortunato University, Benevento, 82100, Campania, Italy
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