Interactions between individual, household, and fishing community resilience in southeast Brazil

Abstract

Resilience is recognized as a multilevel phenomenon, yet few studies have examined how the levels interact. This is partly because individual-level resilience and social-ecological systems resilience have developed in different fields. Here we explore the shocks and stresses experienced by a fishing community and its members, their responses, and how resilience features were expressed at individual, household, and community levels in southeast Brazil. First, both connections and disjunctions were found between resilience features at the three levels. Second, the greater resilience of certain individuals and households within the community contributed to increased social differentiation and reduced overall community resilience. Third, understanding resilience at multiple levels highlighted the consideration of persistence, adaptation, and transformation processes as potentially complementary, rather than conflicting. These conclusions underline the importance of understanding the particularities of each level, and how they relate to one another. A multilevel approach provides insight into aspects of resilience that would not be apparent if only one level were explored.

Keywords

• adaptation
• caiçara
• multilevel resilience
• persistence
• shocks and stresses
• small-scale fisheries
• transformation
• vulnerability