Resilience Discourse Research Articles

‘Steeling’ Young People: Resilience and Youth Policy in Scotland

This article examines the growth of resilience-focused youth policy in Scotland, and its association with the proliferation of the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) agenda. To do this, it critically compares policy discourse with qualitative data on young people’s experiences of growing up in two similar, low-income neighbourhoods. This combination leads us to problematise resilience-informed practice, relative to the voices of young people. Our review demonstrates that by emphasising individual protective factors, resilience discourse reframes inequalities embedded within certain neighbourhoods, and the specific impacts on young people who live there. The consequence is not an assets-based youth policy that supports all young people, but rather a form of resilience which promotes the ‘steeling’ of young people; making them stronger and more resistant to adversities. These adversities, we conclude, may be preventable within a more just social order.

“We the resilient”: colonizing indigeneity in the era of trump

This article addresses the functions of resilience in the political struggles of indigenous peoples against colonialism. In particular it analyses the discourse of indigenous resilience, which has ...

The Neoliberal Production of Deserving and Undeserving Poor: A Critique of the Australian Experience of Microfinance

Neoliberalism as economic orthodoxy has facilitated the onset of social and public policy that is required to ‘fit’ with the common sense of our times. This article critiques the growth of government-supported financial capability programs in Australia. We explore the experiences of a sample of rural South Australians who have accessed microcredit. We found that microcredit provides an avenue for poverty survival by reducing the stresses associated with financial shocks through consumption smoothing, yet that the extent to which microcredit contributes to addressing poverty and inequality is questionable. We critique how the discourse of financial resilience aims to produce deserving neoliberal citizens who are moving toward self-reliance. We conclude that effort should be directed at developing a structural, proportionate universal approach that does not rely on financially vulnerable individuals navigating a regulatory environment that rewards and punishes in accordance to a market logic.

On the Road to Affirmation: Facilitating Urban Resilience in the Americas

This article explores how international policy elites rationalise intervention by trying to go beyond the neoliberal critique of universalist knowledge and top-down governance. In the enabling neoliberal policy projects of the 2000s, international policymakers were banned from imposing substantive policy solutions from above, but were considered (uniquely) capable of putting in place the facilitating framework through which local actors could produce context sensitive policy responses. The reason is that, although neoliberal policy rejected simplistic universalist notions of the subject, market and the state, it continued to operate through a range of reductionist assumptions, concepts and categories, such as bounded rationality, the rational design of incentives and a core set of liberal normative aspirations. In contrast, the resilience discourse seems to be set on overcoming the remaining analytical reductionism of neo-liberal policy frameworks. What are the implications for international policy engagement in the Global South of this much more radical critique? How do international policymakers think about facilitating local agency if the knowledge premises which made them an agential self in international relations disappear? The paper investigates these questions with reference to the evolution of crime-related US security interventions in the Americas, recurring especially on the Merida Initiative.

Embracing the Culture of Resilience and Remembrance in Teaching Contested Historical Narratives

Abstract The article focuses on a discourse of resilience and remembering and its interconnectedness in teaching contested historical narratives. History mainly consists of events, remembrance, narratives, rituals, discourses, and stereotypes which can facilitate or prevent resilience. Since such purposes are part of religious and values education, a multidimensional approach is needed, which combines historical, psychological, religious, sociological, educational and literary aspects in a kind of ‘grammar of remembrance’, in order to motivate and facilitate autonomous and supervised research with discussions and sharing of experiences in different projects. The aim of this conceptual study is to facilitate interdisciplinary research and educational projects concerning memory cultures and conflict management.

Стрессоустойчивость в современных дискурсах управления

The notion of resilience has become firmly embedded in the contemporary discourse of a number of international organizations and states. In the UN system, resilience supplemented a glossary of sustainable development. In the UK, USA, France and other countries, it is actively used by national bureaucracies in security sphere. This article analyzes the articulation of this notion in the discourses of three interrelated levels – global governance (exemplified by the United Nations), supranational regional governance (EU) and national governance (United Kingdom and United States). The author draws conclusions concerning the specifics of the articulation of the concept at different levels, and about the reasons for its dissemination in the discourses of governance and security in the last decade. The article pays special attention to the relevance of the discourse of resilience to Russian practice.

Urban Resilience Discourse Analysis: Towards a Multi-Level Approach to Cities

This study aims to understand the current state of research in urban resilience, its relations to urban sustainability and to integrate several distinct approaches into a multi-level perspective of cities comprising micro, meso and macro levels and their interactions. In fact, based on the meta-analysis of nearly 800 papers from Scopus from 1973 to 2018, we show that urban resilience discourses address micro and meso levels, considering shocks of bottom-up origin such as natural disasters. In contrast, the regional resilience approach addresses meso and macro levels (regional and global scales), considering shocks of top-down origin such as world economic crises. We find these approaches complementary and argue that in order to expand the urban resilience theory and overcome its limitations, they should be combined. For that purpose we propose a multi-level perspective that integrates both top-down and bottom-up dynamic processes. We argue that urban resilience is shaped by the synchronicity of adaptive cycles on three levels: micro, meso and macro. To build the multi-level approach of dynamics of adaptive cycles we use the panarchy framework.

Resisting resilience: disrupting discourses of self-efficacy

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the turn towards discourses of resilience within Higher Education, and its shared conceptual space with notions of ‘grit’ or the promotion of a Growth Mindset. Of particular concern is how these discourses reinforce simplistic conceptualizations of students as ‘millennial snowflakes’ in need of ‘toughening up’. Whilst acknowledging the realities of student anxiety, and engaging with the precarity of employment within the sector, we contend that discourses of resilience threaten to mask systemic issues in favour of promoting individual change. By interrogating these seemingly benign discourses we seek to highlight the neoliberal underpinnings of narratives of resilience.

Professional resilience in GPs working in areas of socioeconomic deprivation: a qualitative study in primary care.

GPs working in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation face particular challenges, and are at increased risk of professional burnout. Understanding how GPs working in such areas perceive professional resilience is important in order to recruit and retain a GP workforce in these areas. To understand how GPs working in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation consider professional resilience. A qualitative study of GPs practising in deprived areas within one primary care region of England. In total, 14 individual interviews and one focus group of eight participants were undertaken, with sampling to data saturation. A framework approach was used for data analysis. Participants described three key themes relating to resilience. First, resilience was seen as involving flexibility and adaptability. This involved making trade-offs in order to keep going, even if this was imperfect. Second, resilience was enacted through teams rather than through individual strength. Third, resilience required the integration of personal and professional values rather than keeping the two separate. This dynamic adaptive view, with an emphasis on the importance of individuals within teams rather than in isolation, contrasts with the discourse of resilience as a personal characteristic, which should be strengthened at the individual level. Professional resilience is about more than individual strength. Policies to promote professional resilience, particularly in settings such as areas of high socioeconomic deprivation, must recognise the importance of flexibility, adaptability, working as teams, and successful integration between work and personal values.

Disciplining the risky subject: a discourse analysis of the concept of resilience in social work literature

Summary The concept of resilience has become an established, taken-for-granted concept in social work. This poststructuralist discourse analysis of randomly sampled social work articles on resilience examines the discursive mechanisms through which the concept of resilience has been constructed in particular ways and considers the political effects of such usage. Findings The study of resilience is always a post facto analysis; markers of resilience are predetermined by dominant ideas of the normal and the normative subject. Systemic risk factors such as poverty and inequality are acknowledged to be productive of subjects in need of resilience. Yet, those structures are relegated to the margins of the manuscript and elided in favor of individualized analysis and intervention; the identified locus of risk and the targeted site of interventions are entirely at odds. Resilience, thus, serves as a designation for risky subjects’ capacity to accommodate—not actively change—their social/political environments, including their interactions with social work and social workers. It functions as a technology of the neoliberal self that allows social workers to construct and manage subjects capable of self-management and productive self-sufficiency. Application The resilience enterprise thus short-circuits social work’s aims for social justice. Examination of the discourse of resilience for their implications for practice, education, and research is a political imperative for social work and is necessary to open up new sightlines of possibility for a reenergized, more complex social work praxis. Suggestions for future directions are included.

Discourses of forgiveness and resilience in stepchild–stepparent relationships

ABSTRACTChallenges and conflicts experienced by stepfamilies are well documented, but researchers are increasingly focused on communication processes that facilitate resilience in these relationships. In other contexts, communicating forgiveness has been linked to relational healing after transgressions or adversity. In the current study, the researchers sought to understand how stepchildren talk about the role of forgiveness in the development of positive adult stepchild–stepparent relationships. Data were drawn from interviews with adult stepchildren who have a positive relationship with a stepparent. Following an interpretive analysis, the researchers identified five themes representing the ways forgiveness was conceptualized and enacted in these positive stepchild–stepparent relationships: forgiveness as (a) healing family connections, (b) explicit negotiation, (c) maturation and acceptance, (d) a response to vulnerability and compassion, and (e) evidence of relational growth. Theoretical and practical applications for understanding and fostering resilient stepfamilies and the role of forgiveness are discussed.

Resiliens i et globalt klimaperspektiv

Resilience has become a key concept in the global climate change discourse, not least in relation to climate change adaptation in the Global South. Taking Bangladesh as an example, this paper explores the role and function of resilience in one of the most climate vulnerable nations. The aim is to examine and critically discuss the popularity of resilience in recent climate change policy. The paper looks into the following aspects of climate change resilience: (i) the relation between resilience and the concepts of mitigation/adaptation; (ii) resilience as a re-description of existing socio-ecological means of adaptation; (iii) resilience as an example of the integration of climate change adaptation and development; (iv) resilience as a strategic resource in obtaining international climate change funding. The four aspects illustrate how the discourse of resilience is surrounded by rather diverse mechanisms and dynamics, which may account for the concepts popularity. It further indicates that while the concept promises a pro-poor and context sensitive approach to climate change resilience, it also risks effacing the principal differences between development and climate change adaptation.

Resiliens hinsides modstand og tilpasning:

Over the recent decades, the concept of resilience has spread from environmental science to a number of disciplines dealing with crisis and disaster management. From psychology, public health, and human resource management to development and security studies, resilience is replacing an earlier focus on resistance and adaptability within these fields. There exist several studies dealing with resilience discourse as a key to a diagnostic of the present. While some hail resilience as a new register of ecological resistance for social movements, other decries resilience as a discourse legitimating the neoliberal state’s abandonment of the poor to catastrophe. This article proposes a framework for reading together these highly diverging interpretations of resilience through a historicising of the concept of resilience, tracing its rise genealogically in relation to the concepts of resistance and adaptability. Through readings of authors such as Thomas Hobbes, Carl von Clausewitz, Herbert Spencer, and C.J. Holling, the article shows how these concepts were imported from scientific materialism into pragmatic and normative discourses of defence of life against shifting threats to individual and social life. The article shows how the shifting importance of the concepts of resistance, adaptability and resilience must be related to changing social-ecological problems and the forms of contestation and governance that respond to them.

The Crisis After the Crisis: Neoliberalized Discourses of Urgency, Risk and Resilience in the Reconstruction of Lac-Mégantic

This article examines how discourses of urgency, risk and resilience were mobilized in the reconstruction phase of Lac-Mégantic in the aftermath of the violent train derailment of July 2013. These discursive practices are central to rendering the existing built environment obsolete and allowing for redevelopment and reconstruction through expropriation and demolition. The manipulative discourses deployed in Lac-Mégantic utilize urgency to justify legislation than enables appropriation and demolition while creating the appearance of asking people to participate to reinvent their city. The mobilization of a risk and public insecurity logic about decontamination served as an alibi for demolishing the remaining downtown to clear the way for new real estate investments. It was also about emotionalizing resilience as a way to discredit contestation and instill acceptance and support for reconstruction efforts. The reconstruction process is deemed a crisis after the July 2013 crisis.

Building institutional capacity: knowledge production for transnational security governance in Mexico

ABSTRACTThis article engages with institutionalist knowledge production in US-Mexican security relations, demonstrating how anti-crime governance in the Americas has shifted from a heavy-handed military rationale to a good governance and civil society–centred approach. This shift has been facilitated by the newly emerging resilience discourse which advocates turning local communities from passive beneficiaries of government-sponsored law enforcement into pro-active security partners. It will be argued that the rise of good governance and society-centred policy thinking has enhanced the epistemic authority of a heterogeneous, but ideologically aligned set of human rights advocacy groups, think tanks, policy-oriented academics and for-profit development NGOs – both in Mexico and the United States. This transnational expert community has been instrumental in inserting the issue of drug-related violent crime in Mexico into a globally dominant statebuilding framework. In consequence, security governance in Mexico has taken on a more transnational character and become the object of a highly intrusive international monitoring regime.

Refusing resilience: the racialization of risk and resilience

ABSTRACT In this short essay debating the politics of resilience, I draw from the circulation of resilience discourses following the Milwaukee Uprising of 2016 to argue that critiques of resilience planning in such cities of the global west must be situated within the context of racial capitalism. I further contend that resilience-informed urban projects are often underpinned by an uncritical embrace of notions of public safety and crime that bolster racialized logics of securitization and carcerality. I conclude by suggesting that rather than seeking to recuperate resilience, we instead should refuse it, embracing planning approaches that emphasize structural change rather than adaption.

De-centring trauma: conflict-related sexual violence and the importance of resilience discourse

ABSTRACTDiscussions about conflict-related sexual violence often focus heavily on trauma. While this article does not seek to minimise the significance of trauma, it is heavily critical of what it regards as a frequent overuse of trauma discourse. The ideas underpinning this research developed from the author’s work with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) and interactions with a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Examples from BiH are used to illustrate the article’s central thesis that trauma discourse can be deeply problematic and counterproductive. In particular, trauma discourse detracts from the critical fact that some survivors exhibit remarkable resilience. Cautioning against highly deterministic approaches to trauma, the article underscores that a multitude of factors can influence the actual impact of a traumatic event. It is similarly in the interactions between survivors and their environments that processes of resilience – a concept that is increasingly theorised within an ecological framework – develop. Drawing on complexity theory, the article underlines the importance of creating the space for a greater recognition of resilience, a discourse that has significant utility in the context of conflict-related sexual violence.

Negotiating stability and transformation through discourses of energy resilience

Considering the urgent need for a low-carbon transition, increasing focus on ‘resilience’ in the energy context raises questions about the discursive function of resilience in the energy field. The...

Assembling and (Re)Assembling Critical Infrastructure Resilience in Khulna City, Bangladesh

Extreme Weather Events continue to cause shocking losses of life and long-term damage at scales, depths and complexities that elude robust and accountable calculation, expression and reparation. Cyclones and storm surges can wipe out entire towns, and overwhelm vulnerable built and lived environments. It was storm surges that was integral to the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina in the USA (2005), Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (2013), as well as Cyclone Nargis (2008) and the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. This paper report on work which concerns itself with the question of, given what we know already about such extreme weather events, and their associated critical infrastructure impacts and recovery trajectories, what scenarios, insights and tools might we develop to enable critical infrastructures which are resilient? With several of the world’s most climate vulnerable cities situated in well-peopled and rapidly growing urban areas near coasts, our case study of Khulna City speaks globally into a resilience discourse, through critical infrastructure, disaster risk reduction, through spatial data science and high visualisation. With a current population of 1.4 million estimated to rise to 2.9 million by 2030, dense historical Khulna City may well continue to perform a critical role in regional economic development and as well as a destination for environmental refugees. Working as part of the EU—CIRCLE consortium, we conduct a case study into cyclones and storm surges affecting the critical infrastructure then discuss salient developments of loss modelling. The research aims to contribute towards a practical framework that stimulates adaptive learning across multiple stakeholders and organisational genres.

BUYER-SUPPLIER COLLABORATION AND SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE: A CASE STUDY IN THE PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY

The purpose of this study was to investigate the underlying mechanisms through which buyer-supplier collaboration enables resilience. A single case study method was adopted, examining a critical case within the petrochemical industry. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The rationale for undertaking buyer-supplier collaboration in the focal firm is grounded in Kraljic’s procurement matrix, accounting for underlying risks of supply disruptions that are inherent in the resilience discourse. The findings suggested that collaboration between buyers and suppliers does not directly lead to supply chain resilience, but rather enables the antecedents to supply chain resilience. The study developed an understanding of the specific mechanisms through which the antecedents of resilience are enabled in the petrochemical industry.