Enacting Economic Resilience: A Synthesis of Economic and Communication Frameworks

Abstract

This work examines three frameworks for responding to economic disruption: risk mitigation, systemic recovery, and economic resilience. Specifically, by reviewing the metatheoretical commitments, analytic contexts, and implications of two economic perspectives, represented by risk mitigation and systemic recovery, we argue that current approaches to understanding resilience in academic economics have failed to address ongoing and emergent disruptions in the economic and social world. In response, this work also reviews a possible synthesis of economic and communication frameworks. This review places the economic resilience framework, inspired by the communication theory of resilience, in conversation with extant literature in economics, communication studies, and other disciplines and concludes with an outline for further theoretical, methodological, and practical development.