An archaeology of societal resilience

Abstract

There seems to be a worldwide push, through policy and Government campaigns, to emphasise a local and decentralised responsibility for societal safety and security. Often, this push is argued for using the notion of resilience. Using an archaeological approach this paper sets out to analyse the conditions of possibility for resilience to get established as an object of knowledge within the discourse of societal safety and security. Three such conditions of possibility are analysed: a scientific availability of resilience language and theory which offers an academic credibility to claims for resilience, a political need to decentralise initiatives (and costs) for societal safety and security to local actors and networks, and a number of events defining the need for such an approach. Critical questions are raised regarding the transfer of responsibility to citizens for societal safety and security, the normative use of resilience language as well as whether the resilience object of knowledge actually provides new language or whether it rather repackages previously present objects of discursive knowledge.