Rural production space system resilience and its research domains

Abstract

As an important attribute of rural production spatce system (RPSS), resilience is a sustainable ability, including persistence (system maintenance), adaptability (system evolution), and transformability (system mutation) in response to internal and external environmental disturbances. It is the only pathway to realizing rural revitalization and sustainable development in rural China. Based on the international and Chinese research and RPSS attributes, this study explored the connotations and essence of RPSS resilience. Meanwhile, based on the epistemology and ontology of philosophy, a qualitative model of RPSS resilience was developed considering the five dimensions of disturbance, stakeholders, state of system, objective of system, and ability of resilience. Applying this qualitative model, this study identified four main research contents of RPSS resilience, which include disturbance recognition and vulnerability analysis, the feedback relationship between vulnerability and resilience, resilience assessment and threshold effect analysis, and the development of adaptive governance system. This article also presented some future research focuses, which include new multidisciplinary and integrative methods, spatiotemporal scale association and multi- dimensional factor transmission, and the integrated development of adaptive governance system of stakeholders. This study may be helpful for the prevention and reduction of major risks and for promoting the development of rural revitalization and rural sustainable development in rural China.