Institutionalizing Resilience for All? A Study of Resilience Discourse, Action, and Punctured Ideologies

• In Event: 4165 - Latinas/os and Natural and Social Disasters

Abstract

In this study, I explore a case of embedded resilience discourse within a post-disaster field using data from Boulder County Colorado. I describe a process through which actors sought to institutionalize resilience as a taken for granted frame for directing action within government organizations, non-profits, and within the community. Within this field, institutional actors also sought to challenge taken for granted visions of community that excluded Latinos from resilience discourse. Drawing upon the discursive model of institutionalization and Fairclough’s notion of ideological-discursive formations, I show how resilience discourse was constructed through combining and recombining elements of macro and micro level narratives that were intended to institutionalize resilience. I argue that the process of institutionalization opens spaces for resistance to ideologies, producing fragmented change.

Author

• Simone Domingue, University of Colorado-Boulder