For several decades resilience thinking has served as a major theoretical lens for social-ecological research, with geographers playing important roles in both advancing the theory and offering meaningful critique. In recent years resilience thinking has also emerged as a promising tool for the assessment of food systems, yet there is significant disagreement among scholars as to the best way to apply resilience thinking to food systems. At the heart of these disagreements lie a set of conceptual tensions that have long existed in the resilience community regarding best practices for operationalizing resilience and the extent to which resilience thinking can (or should) engage with issues of social justice and power dynamics. Geographers, particularly those working in the fields of political ecology and critical physical geography, are well positioned to navigate these tensions and contribute to the growing scholarship on food system resilience through what I call an instrumental-reflexive approach to resilience thinking. Drawing on scholarship on the role of environmental science in political ecology and critical physical geography, I develop an approach to resilience that deploys empirical assessments to provide instrumental knowledge of food systems, but also engages reflexively with empirical findings to consider how they interact with entrenched power relations across multiple scales—practices that have a long tradition in geographic scholarship. In so doing, I chart an approach to resilience that, provides significant utility for farmers and food system workers, and gives support (though not the ultimate justification) for dismantling unjust and exploitative structures in our current food systems.

中文翻译：

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一种评估和建立粮食系统复原力的工具性反思方法

几十年来，复原力思维一直是社会生态研究的主要理论视角，地理学家在推进理论和提供有意义的批评方面都发挥着重要作用。近年来，复原力思维也成为评估粮食系统的有前途的工具，但学者们对于将复原力思维应用于粮食系统的最佳方式存在重大分歧。这些分歧的核心是在弹性社区中长期存在的一系列概念上的紧张关系，这些紧张关系涉及实施弹性的最佳实践以及弹性思维可以（或应该）参与社会正义和权力动态问题的程度。地理学家，尤其是在政治生态学和批判自然地理学领域工作的地理学家，有能力应对这些紧张局势，并通过我所说的工具性反思方法来应对不断增长的粮食系统韧性研究。利用关于环境科学在政治生态学和批判自然地理学中的作用的学术研究，我开发了一种弹性方法，该方法部署实证评估以提供粮食系统的工具性知识，但也反思性地参与实证研究，以考虑它们如何与跨多个尺度的根深蒂固的权力关系相互作用——在地理学研究中具有悠久传统的实践。在这样做时，我制定了一种恢复力的方法，它为农民和粮食系统工人提供了重要的效用，并为拆除我们当前粮食系统中的不公正和剥削结构提供支持（尽管不是最终理由）。