‘Bouncing back’ to capitalism? Grass-roots autonomous activism in shaping discourses of resilience and transformation following disaster

Abstract

Resilience has been criticised in many fields for focussing on attempts to bounce back or maintain the status quo following a disturbance. Such conceptualisations can uphold the hegemony of discourses of stability and are potentially unhelpful to groups seeking to achieve radical change. Despite this, the concept is fast subsuming sustainability as the latest catchphrase for community organisations wishing to address social and environmental injustices. Grass-roots groups are mobilising activism to shape this interpretation through post-capitalist visions -creating alternatives to dominant capitalist narratives in the present. This paper will discuss the expression of such radical notions of resilience through exploring how activism intersects with experiences of disaster. Through the case study of Project Lyttelton, a community organisation at the epicentre of the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake in Aotearoa, New Zealand, this research examines the potential for a radical notion of resilience to challenge hegemonic understandings of everyday capitalist life. By exploring this tension between resilience and post-capitalist activism, this paper contributes to an emerging area of critique through articulating a more nuanced understanding of the radical potential for what is often expressed as an inherently non-radical concept.

Improving participatory resilience assessment by cross-fertilizing the Resilience Alliance and Transition Movement approaches

“…However, they do not explicitly address the local-regional transformations that need to happen to enhance planetary resilience (e.g., transforming to a low-carbon economy) and to avoid unwanted erosion of the resilience of other places (e.g., halting illegal ivory imports). On the contrary, the Transition Movement has adopted an interpretation of resilience that focuses on the root causes of environmental problems (Brown 2014, Cretney 2014, Cretney and Bond 2014. For example, it calls for a transformation away from societies' heavy dependence on cheap fossil fuels to avoid dangerous climate change globally (Appendix 1:1C).…”

Questioning the Diffusion of Resilience Discourses in Pursuit of Transformational Change

“…First is a perceived inability to articulate and address complex social processes such as power relations, human agency, and ideation. Critics have pointed out the lack of attention paid to how multiple actors utilize and contest different interpretations of what it means to be resilient (Brown 2014;Cretney and Bond 2014;O'Brien 2012). Despite resilience discourses appearing to be more analytical than their normative ancestor, sustainable development, the new discourses still offer a paucity of social theory, leading to a narrow and all-too familiar focus on material assets, economic incentives, and individual behavior (Armitage et al 2010;Davidson 2010).…”

Co-producing neighbourhood resilience

“…Resilience processes empower communities to promote a post-capitalist agenda (Cretney & Bond, 2014) that are in conflict with mainstream politics. This explains why the neighbourhood and city levels of resilience are the most vulnerable civic initiatives.…”