| Trap characteristics and challenges for synthesis | Development literature | Resilience literature |
| Poverty traps interpretation | Self-reinforcing mechanisms that cause poverty to persist |
Maladaptive departures from normal adaptive cycle of system |
| Poverty trap mechanisms |
1) capital thresholds 2) dysfunctional institutions, or 3) neighborhood effects |
A system configuration of low potential, low connectedness, and low resilience that locks a system in a maladaptive state |
| Rigidity traps | No explicit treatment |
A maladaptive configuration of high potential, high connectedness, and high
resilience. A social system where members of an organization and their institutions
become highly connected, rigid, and inflexible |
| Strengths | Detailed, specific, and mainly empirical understanding of traps |
Broad, general, and mainly theoretical understanding |
| Weakness |
Separate, unconnected explanations Neglect of ecological drivers |
Inconsistent treatment of traps Tendency to endogenize causation Limits of biological models |
| Challenges vis à vis indigenous context | The need for close scrutiny of system boundaries, characterization of system-environment interaction, and accounting for internal and external factors | |
| The need to reinterpret poverty traps as resilient but undesirable states | ||
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The possibility of co-occurrence of poverty and rigidity traps |
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