Centering at the Margins: Critical Community Resilience Praxis

Abstract

Aims: This article aims to reframe resilience for use in community research and action in conditions of adversity marked by increasing natural disasters and by social inequities rooted in the coloniality of power, such as in Chile. Method: We review international resilience literature that explores responses to complex adversities, evaluating three “waves” of resilience research, including (1) “bouncing back,” which frames resilience as protecting functioning; (2) “bouncing forward,” understanding resilience as adaptation; and (3) what we are calling, the “centering at the margins” wave, which explicitly incorporates liberation psychology and decolonial, critical race theories to the study and promotion of resilience. Results: Building off “third wave” thinking, this article attempts to improve the social justice ethics within which research on resilience is completed by introducing a critical community resilience praxis. Conclusions: Critical community resilience praxis can aid the study of resilience by illuminating ways to avoid the reinforcement of social hierarchies and interlocking systems of oppression relevant to the work of disaster risk reduction investigators, psychologists, and differently positioned stakeholders engaged in resilience research and practice in complex settings internationally marked by histories of colonialism, consequences of climate change, and continual social inequities.

Engaging critical community resilience praxis: A qualitative study with Mapuche communities in Chile facing structural racism and disasters

“…Four themes emerged from the use of grounded theory situational analysis and decolonial community‐engaged approaches to critical antiracist inquiry described above as a CCRP (see Atallah, Bacigalupe, & Repetto, ). These four themes articulate participants responses, as organized by our MECIR data analysis team, into a theoretical framework explaining resilience formulated in Mapudungun: (a) newen, as “strength and spiritual‐nature life force”; (b) azmapu, as “ancestral systems of social organization and tribal law”; (c) nietun, as “cultural revitalization”; and (d) marichiweu, as “resistance.” These four emergent themes and their subthemes are outlined in Table , substantiated by quotes of study participants and are explicated in detail below.…”

“…In the first wave, an emphasis was placed on better understanding the human capacity to protect the status quo, or to "bounce back" after trauma or adverse experiences. Atallah et al (2017) argue that the second wave of resilience scholarship shifted from a focus on an individual's or a systems' capacity to investigating adaptive processes. This second trend can be characterized as the "bounce forward" wave because of its focus on posttraumatic growth and human adaptation .…”

“…Resilience scholars (e.g., Ungar, 2015) and community activists (e.g., Brown, 2017) are advocating more and more to focus on promoting both mental health and social justice together, emphasizing letting go of the status quo and focusing instead on fostering value-based movements privileging interdependence and collaboration, which overlap with core values in community psychology (e.g., Prilleltensky, 2009). Thus, Atallah et al (2017) suggest that a critical community resilience praxis (CCRP) could be helpful to investigators attempting to contribute to processes of promoting resilience in ways that dismantle interlocking systems of power and oppression, which are rarely shaped by one factor or process, and that unfold at the intersections of psychosocial and physical realities (Atallah, 2016;Donovan, 2017;Lorenz, 2013). In fact, Atallah et al (2017) argue that resilience itself is intersectional.…”

“…Thus, Atallah et al (2017) suggest that a critical community resilience praxis (CCRP) could be helpful to investigators attempting to contribute to processes of promoting resilience in ways that dismantle interlocking systems of power and oppression, which are rarely shaped by one factor or process, and that unfold at the intersections of psychosocial and physical realities (Atallah, 2016;Donovan, 2017;Lorenz, 2013). In fact, Atallah et al (2017) argue that resilience itself is intersectional. In other words, pathways toward resilience intersect with the human selves and bodies that respond to cumulative adversities embedded in sociocultural and historical contexts, which in turn shape health trajectories as people literally embody biologically the conditions in which they live (Grosz, 1994;Krieger, 2005).…”

“…Consistent with critically oriented community‐based participatory approaches to research (e.g., Fals‐Borda, ; Atallah, ; Lazarus, Taliep, Bulbulia, Phillips, & Seedat, ; Lykes & Scheib, ; Rasmus, Charles, & Mohatt, ; Shapiro et al., ; Sonn & Quayle, ), the point of departure for this research project involved using CCRP (Atallah, Bacigalupe, & Repetto, ) to engage in relationship building while seeking to understand “our place” as researchers in the social landscape of Mapuche communities and the broader Chilean society. In doing so, Atallah–a postdoctoral research fellow with the Chilean National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management at the time (December of 2015)–began to deconstruct the normative discourses and practices within which investigators in Chilean academia and related national research centers tend to create their partnerships with indigenous communities, by recognizing how racism and other forms of discrimination may be carved into even the most well‐intentioned studies, interventions, policies, and efforts by academics to increase research participation.…”