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

Abstract

In this paper, we respond to academic critiques of resilience that suggest an inherent affinity with neoliberalism and/or the incompatibility of resilience and critical agency. Drawing on the reflections of people who have found 'resilience' a helpful conceptual tool that has informed their engagement with a challenging and unsettling context, we suggest that ideas of resilience, solidarity and agency intersect in complex and interesting ways. Following a brief discussion of our methodology, we begin with an overview of how respondents to an online survey and a series of related conversations conceptualise resilience. We go on to explore how these conceptualisations might relate to critical analysis of the status quo, and to engagement with solidarity and agency. We conclude that there is potential to link these concepts, and that thoughtful engagement with this potential, and with the tensions and questions it raises, might make valuable contributions to both theory and practice.

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

“…One thread emerging in this literature is the call for a more nuanced and careful analysis of what resilience can be, what it can do, and what it should do. Several authors (Bottrell, 2009; Kelly & Kelly, 2017; Michelsen, 2017), as we have done in this study, alert us to the epistemological peril of relying on normative, hegemonic knowledge frameworks (Chandler, 2014; Michelsen, 2017) to label resilient, only those behaviors and attributes, which are legitimated techniques of the self (O’Malley, 2010). One basic way to combat such tendencies would be to see such practices of resistance—to institutions and systems, including social work—as resilience rather than its lack.…”

“…Second, we hoped that the fault lines we identified would aid in formulating the directions for further study. In this final section, we point to alternative approaches and lines of inquiry developed in other disciplines—including social ecology (Boonstra, 2016; Fabinyi, Evans, & Foale, 2014; Hornborg, 2013; Stone-Jovicich, 2015), planning and environmental studies (Davoudi, Brooks, & Mehmood, 2013), international relations and development studies (Vilcan, 2017; Walsh-Dilley, Wolford, & McCarthy, 2016), security and governance studies (Chandler, 2014; Kelly & Kelly, 2017; Michelsen, 2017; O’Malley, 2010), and more infrequently, social work (Bottrell, 2009; Ungar, Ghazinour, & Richter, 2013)— that may help to do so. While an exhaustive explication and in-depth critique of the complex and often discipline-specific theories and models presented in these works is beyond the scope of our study, we identify here a handful of ideas as possible arenas of future study.…”

“…One basic way to combat such tendencies would be to see such practices of resistance—to institutions and systems, including social work—as resilience rather than its lack. Alternatively, social work researchers such as Bottrell (2009) together with other authors writing in international relation studies (Vilcan, 2017) and governmentality studies (Kelly & Kelly, 2017) caution against the dismissal of the concept of resilience as solely a pacifying and disciplinary force concomitant to neoliberal governance. They alert us to the provocative possibility that the very qualities or attributes such as adaptability, responsibility, optimism, and hope (Bottrell, 2009; Michelsen, 2017; O’Malley, 2010) critiqued by us and others as instruments of neoliberal discipline can perhaps be harnessed to function differently.…”

“…They alert us to the provocative possibility that the very qualities or attributes such as adaptability, responsibility, optimism, and hope (Bottrell, 2009; Michelsen, 2017; O’Malley, 2010) critiqued by us and others as instruments of neoliberal discipline can perhaps be harnessed to function differently. Attributes that have been used to uphold neoliberal logics of self-sufficiency and docile adaptation can function instead as a disruptive force to those logics and serve to forge new politics of solidarity and collectivized political action (Kelly & Kelly, 2017; Michelsen, 2017).…”

Resilient Humanitarianism? Using Assemblage to re-evaluate the history of the League of Red Cross Societies

“…91 For example, Ute and Rhys Kelly explore contexts in which resilience and solidarity interconnect and result in transformative systemic change rather than just coping. 92 They find that key to this transformative potential is the effort of building trans-local connections and relationships, which strengthens resilience and solidarity simultaneously. This focus on local action and relationships is evident in the IFRC's 'One Billion Coalition for Resilience' initiative to create networks of 'caring individuals, motivated communities and like-minded organizations from all sectors' that will enable one billion people to take action that builds resilience by 2025.…”