The Resilience Trap: Moving Beyond Resilience for Understanding Disasters and Crises

• In Event: 40414 - Disaster and Inequality

Abstract

Scholars studying disasters, catastrophes, and crises often used the term “resilient” to describe the ability of affected people to “bounce back” and reestablish pre-crisis behaviors, patterns, and institutions. In this article, we outline the emergence, meanings, and genealogy of the term in various disciplines. We discuss how resilience is typically conceptualized and operationalized, and we provide a sociological critique of its current usages. We argue that the term often erases social structures, processes of power and inequality, and it risks pathologizing those with less ability to recover from disasters. We also show how the term has been appropriated by the private sector to offer products and services which do little to help an affected community’s most vulnerable people, with resilience instead serving as a tool for profit extraction and rent-seeking. In the final section of the paper, we offer alternatives which can be used instead of resilience when analyzing disasters and crises. We conclude that our objective ought not to be re-define or clarify resilience, but we contend the term should be abandoned entirely.

Authors

• Kristen Barber, University of Missouri-Kansas City

• Timothy Haney, Mount Royal University