(Un)Defining resilience: subjective understandings of ‘resilience’ from the field

Abstract

This introduction addresses the rise of 'resilience thinking' in development practice and argues that though scholars and practitioners have sought to define and measure the term resilience the concept is neither fixed nor self-evident. We argue that this lack of ontological coherence unexpectedly makes resilience more productive as an object of inquiry than it would be if it were reduced to a standardised analytical framework or technical object. In the article, we draw on our experiences with a multi-case participatory, community-based research project oriented at uncovering subjective understandings of resilience. These different cases are featured in the articles in this special issue; in the introduction we bring them together to argue that paying attention to the grounded and embedded processes of meaning-making around resilience reveals not only the ambiguity and place-specificity of the concept but also exposes the contradictions inherent in many resilience-oriented interventions.

Resilience, solidarity, agency – grounded reflections on challenges and synergies

“…to grapple with 'the fragility of things' (Connolly, 2013), with a real sense of converging crises, seem to us more worthwhile -and more conducive to critical engagement with resilience -than the dismissal of resilience at the level of abstract discourse (for similar arguments, also see Cretney & Bond, 2014;Walsh-Dilley & Wolford, 2015). A good basis for such conversations would be the recognition that, in the difficult context in which efforts to build solidarity and political agency now find themselves, there are no easy answers.…”

“…As explained above, our aim in this project has been to elicit and examine perspectives on resilience that have been influential on the ground, and to bring them into conversation with some of the critical perspectives on 'resilience' that have been articulated in academic debates. In this, we share the aim of other recent articles in this journal that are concerned with 'paying attention to the grounded and embedded meaning-making around resilience' (Walsh-Dilley & Wolford, 2015). We started by identifying and engaging with networks or communities of practice that are explicitly using the concept of resilience, and in the process, exploring its meaning and application in the context of their everyday practice and experience.…”

“…Cote & Nightingale, 2012;Davoudi, 2012;Leach, 2008;Porter & Davoudi, 2012;Shaw, 2012;van der Haart et. al., 2015;Walsh-Dilley & Wolford, 2015), the critical questions of resilience 'of what, to what, for whom, to what purpose?' are key.…”

Review article: Towards a context-driven research: a state-of-the-art review of resilience research on climate change

“…Such systems are composed of many components (properties, agents, resources, governance systems). And these components interact with each other, in response to ever-changing environments (Walsh-Dilley & Wolford, 2015;Juncos, 2017;. Hence, resilience to climate change is a matter of evolution: in naturalist social science resilience is presented as 'evolutionary resilience' (Pizzo, 2015: 137; Davoudi, 2018: 4).…”

“…In constructivist social science, also inspired by Holling's approach, resilience to climate change presents itself as an object of scientific inquiry or guiding concept rather than as a system property (Walsh-Dilley & Wolford, 2015;Weichselgartner & Kelman, 2015;Kythreotis & Bristow, 2017). In constructivist resilience research, resilience is not researched within the framework of complexity theory.…”