SoLiXG:Resilience
Resilience
Resilience is generally understood as the capacity to quickly adapt to or recover from shocks. It was coined in the 19th century after the Latin word resiliens (rebounding or recoiling) and was meant to describe the trait of certain materials to return to its initial shape after being impacted by exterior forces. Nevertheless, it was only in the latter half of the 20th century that researches in the fields of psychology and ecology developed the word into a scientific concept. In this context it was adapted to not only delineate the capability of ‘bouncing back’, but to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to recover and improve at the same time. The ecologist Crawford S. Holling was especially important in developing and popularizing the concept. In an influential article from 1973 he criticized the then hegemonic understanding of ecological systems as governed by equilibrium states and theorized them instead as systems that have to continually adapt to unforeseen disruptions and sudden changes.[1]
As a philosophical position resilience-thinking entails four central pillars: (1) the assumption of an ontology of volatility, i.e. a “random world” [2] that is in constant instability, disrupted by indetectable forces from without and within. This also translates in a conception of social agents as being in a constant state of vulnerability, since actors are permanently exposed to dangers due to abrupt changes in their environment. Derived from this resilience-thinking postulates (2) an epistemological defeatism, i.e. a view of disruptions and crises as unpredictable and at the same time inevitable events. David Chandler has described this onto-epistemological commitment as one that sees the world as consisting of “unknown-unknowns” [3] by which causal mechanisms underlying events can only be known post-hoc. From this follows (3) a cataclysmic optimism which makes a virtue out of necessity and frames disruptions, shocks, crises and catastrophes not as negative eventualities one should try to avoid, but as chances to adapt, to learn und to improve. The resilient subject is thus constructed as one characterized by spontaneous adaptive rather than reflexive agency, viewing existential uncertainty as an opportunity rather than a burden. Translated into governance, resilience thinking therefore privileges (4) micro-strategies of adaption to unforeseeable events, centered on small units like communities over large-scale crisis prevention, that seek to avoid disruptions and try to maintain stability and equilibrium for society as a whole.
As a mode of governmentality, resilience was shaped in the early 2000s in reaction to sudden shocks to Western societies such as the attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. Around this time the concept also entered debates on developmental and environmental policy in the UN, the World Bank and Western government circles. The European Union defined it in 2016 as “the ability of states and societies to reform, thus withstanding and recovering from internal and external crisis”. [4] The attractiveness of the notion of resilience can be ascribed to its function as a guiding concept in times of what some have called the ‘polycrisis’. Economic, ecological, medical, political and social shocks and catastrophes are more and more seen as a constant feature of society. They are understood to be at the same time more probable and also as inherently unpredictable. The objective of resilience entails the promise of a society, which is able to withstand the turbulence of uncertain and increasingly catastrophic times.
But as of yet it is unclear which kinds of social activities make societies resilient in the face of multiple forms of crises. While resilience-thinking was in the early 2000s closely related to neoliberal forms of governance, it recently – in the context of new conflictual geopolitical dynamics – is also used to make the case for a more state-interventionist approach, in which questions relating to digital technologies and infrastructures such as semiconductors are paramount. In this spirit, within the more recent policy discourse of the European Union resilience is bound up with other social imaginaries such as digital sovereignty and the twin transition. Some argue this expansion of the concept have reduced it to a buzzword. [5] Nevertheless, the fact that the meaning of the term is being fought over shows that it still has ideological appeal.
- ↑ Holling, C S. 1973. „Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems“. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4(1): p. 1–23.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 13.
- ↑ Chandler, David. 2014. Beyond Neoliberalism: Resilience, the new art of governing complexity. In: International Policies, Practices and Discourses 2(1), p. 51
- ↑ European External Action Service. 2016. Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe : A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy. LU: Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2871/9875 (28. August 2024). p. 23.
- ↑ Joseph, Jonathan/Juncos, Ana E. 2024. Conceptual politics and resilience-at-work in the European Union. In: Review of International Studies, 50(2), p. 385.