Explaining the diversity of resilience in the climate change and security discourse

Abstract

The concept of resilience has taken the hearts of Western practitioners and decision makers in development, environmental, or security policy by storm – or so it seems. In the looming “climate of complexity” produced by unfolding global warming, the idea of resilience, as the ability of systems and communities to autonomously recover after shocks and to adapt to changing environmental conditions, appears promising. Yet, different versions of resilience co-exist and compete with each other in diverse political arenas and fields of practice. As a result, resilience resists any conceptual fixation – making it hard for policy-makers and practitioners to agree upon a common definition of resilience. This essay seeks to explain the diversity of resilience by looking at processes of its “translation”. The translation of resilience here refers to both the transfer of the concept from one discursive field to another as well as the adoption and reinterpretation of resilience through actors in concrete resilience projects on the ground.