Archetypes are two sides of the same coin. On one hand, they are patterns left on empirical data that suggest similar underlying mechanisms. On the other, they are the mechanisms responsible for common dynamics across case studies. Regardless of your departure point, key to successful identification is leveraging comparability. Here I present qualitative and quantitative methods for archetype identification in social-ecological systems. Clustering approaches will be tested on the context of public data at the second level administrative unit in Ghana and Burkina Faso 1. Expert elicitation and structural equivalence analysis will be combined to showcase 7 case studies across Latin America 2. The strengths, limitations and common pitfalls of each approach will be discussed.
Rocha, J C, K Malmborg, L J Gordon, Kate A Brauman, and Fabrice DeClerck. 2019. “Mapping Social Ecological Systems Archetypes.” Environmental Research Letters. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab666e.↩︎
Rocha, Juan, Matilda Baraibar, Lisa Deutsch, Ariane de Bremond, Jordan S Oestreicher, Florencia Rositano, and Cecilia Gelabert. 2019. “Toward Understanding the Dynamics of Land Change in Latin America: Potential Utility of a Resilience Approach for Building Archetypes of Land-Systems Change.” Ecology and Society 24 (1). doi:10.5751/ES-10349-240117.↩︎