Resilience

Bibliographic Data

ID3914293
AuthorsMark Vardy (0000-0003-4008-3755), Mick Smith
Year2017
Volume9
Issue1
Pages175-179
Publication date2017-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironmental Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/22011919-3829199
OpenAlexW4236396945
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited8

R esilience has rapidly become the most used and abused term in contemporary policy and decision making.Like the idiom of "sustainable development," it incorporates multiplicities of difference into a single and apparently incontrovertible consensus.Who could possibly disagree with making social, economic, and ecological "systems" more resilient in the face of our current environmental problems, especially global climate change?Surely resilience and the ability to "adapt" to adversity by "bouncing back" is in everyone's interest.The plurality of claims made on behalf of resilience in fields as diverse as urban planning, international security, environmental policy, financial regulation, development economics, and mental health echo the fragmented ends and means that came under the rubric of sustainable development.And as many critics of sustainability point out, the varied and sometimes incompatible interests served by sustainability depend on who wants to sustain what-livelihoods or profits, ecological health or economic wealth, individuals, species, or systems.With the recent mainstreaming of climate change as a political problem, resilience similarly threatens to subsume articulations of political difference to a totalizing will to action.Resilience risks becoming code word for "business as usual" as industrial, military, and political elites rearrange their operations to acknowledge the reality of climate change while maintaining relations of power. 1 To be sure, there are examples of people doing progressive work under the name of resilience.Some critical scholars push its conceptual framework to include social 1.Cote and Nightingale, "Resilience Thinking Meets Social Theory"; Diprose, "Resilience Is Futile"; Taylor

Physics · Resilience (materials science · Resilience and Mental Health

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