The socio-historical constructiveness of resilience

Abstract

The multidisciplinary discourse of and about ‘resilience’ has achieved considerable prominence especially within the last three decades. We find the term being used in a variety of ways and with a diverse array of meanings in numerous scientific, professional and even everyday contexts. Professional actors ‘observe’ phenomena through a conceptual apparatus centered on resilience; academic disciplines, meanwhile, use this concept to ‘observe’ both the everyday, professional (practicing therapists, pedagogues, psychologists) and political uses of the concept (‘the jargon of resilience’), as well as scrutinizing academic perspectives that deploy the term.