The following short answers were my response to a class assignment in late 2018. Short and sweet, I think it quickly illustrates the issues with ‘resilience’ and its apolitical nature.
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From a resilience theory perspective, in what ways can a city’s resilience to disasters be defined and measured?
Resilience theory is a contested framework on viewing socio-ecological change. The internal contestations mean that there is no clear definition of what ‘resilience’ is, nor how to apply it practically. In this context one can define a ‘city’s resilience to disasters’ in a number of ways. Firstly, there is the discourse of ‘engineering resilience’ (Davoudi, 2012). This discourse defines resilience as the speed to which as system reverts itself to its original state following a disturbance (Davoudi, 2012). A resilient city in this paradigm may be measured in its speed of emergency response team mobilisation, or its speed of rebuilding felled buildings.
Another view of resilience is that of ‘ecological resilience’, as theorised by Holling (Davoudi, 2012). This definition considers the magnitude of disturbance a system faces. The larger magnitude of disturbance the system can adapt to without changing its original state and function, the more resilient the system is (Davoudi, 2012). Operationalised, this definition may measure the extent of which a chronic stressor affects a city’s function, such as drought or annual flooding.
A further view of resilience is ‘evolutionary resilience’ (Davoudi, 2012). This view is built from the criticism that the two above models are built on an assumed position of ‘normality’ of which they advocate a return to. Evolutionary resilience does not believe in an equilibrium, but rather socio-ecological systems are constantly changing with or without disturbance (Davoudi, 2012). In the words of Davoudi (2012: 302), ‘change can happen because of internal stresses with no proportional or linear relationship between the cause and the effects’. Evolutionary resilience has been represented by Gunderson and Hollings (2002) panarchy model, illustrating the many different ways in which change manifests – from ‘slow to fast/ small to large/ short to long’ (Davoudi, 2012: 304).
What are the risks in applying resilience thinking to cities?
There are a number of risks in applying these theories into preparing cities for socio-ecological change. Davoudi (2012) questions to what extent does this approach accounts for human intervention and ingenuity. In this sense resilience thinking is problematic in painting these dramatic changes as ‘inevitabilities’ (Davoudi, 2012). If we take disasters as normal, does this distract from our role in increasing their frequency through anthropogenic climate change?
Furthermore, Davoudi (2012: 305) takes issue with resilience thinking for being a ‘quintessentially American idea’ of self-reliance – highlighting both its arbitrary localism and its centrism to the culture of the United States. Davoudi’s (2012) point is short, appearing as a throwaway comment, yet it is a strong criticism in its own nature: is it best practice to assume communities such as cities can become best prepared in isolation (i.e. resilient) for disasters? Is it fair to say a community, or city, suffered and continues to suffer from a disaster because they weren’t resilient where American ‘resilient’ cities will always have the backup assistance of the U.S. government, but others do not?
Davoudi (2012: 305) adds to this, asserting that resilience thinking pays homage to wider neoliberal discourse, morally excusing a lack of government involvement in disaster relief, labelling it ‘a kind of social Darwinism’. By its nature, resilience thinking requires bounding: drawing a line of what is and isn’t included. Since resilience thinking has no clear definition, it is entirely possible for resilience washing to become prominent, where governments offload the moral responsibility for disaster relief to local communities, or even individuals. In this sense, resilience thinking can be both academically apolitical by not examining power structures, and practically politicised where it is used to excuse inaction.
Furthermore, Miller et al. (2010) feel there is few operationalised examples of resilience (as of 2010). This is clearly problematic. Simply put, resilience thinking has no clear long-term history of being successfully operationalised in practice or policy at even the micro level, so why should it deserve to be applied at the city level?
In what ways might a vulnerability framework help navigate these risks?
A vulnerability framework can navigate the risk of resilience thinking being ignorant of human intervention, as it is more actor orientated (Miller et al., 2010). Miller et al. (2010: np) acknowledge this stating ‘an actor-oriented view’ is important in analysing power structures and conflict. With that said, Miller et al. (2010) also acknowledge that resilience thinking ‘implicitly’ deals with this problem. Thus, a vulnerability framework could assess risk by making obvious that which is implied by resilience thinking. Vulnerability frameworks are suited to deal with the risks inherent in resilience thinking’s tendency to be apolitical (Adger, 2006; Miller et al., 2010). Vulnerability frameworks, in line with political ecology, seek to actively identify underlying political reasons to why certain groups are more exposed to disturbances – examples including poor governance, race relations and economic history (Adger, 2006). In other words, ‘Likewise, resilience approaches aimed at securing future sustainability cannot be realized without understanding the socio-political processes and environmental linkages that underpin the foundations of vulnerability.’ (Miller et al., 2010: np). It is this ‘foundation’ of vulnerability that allows it to engage with the above risks of resilience thinking: the interference of Americentric cultural ideas of self-reliance and the wider cultural siting within neoliberalism. Thus, Miller et al. (2010) make the substantiated point that vulnerability and resilience thinking can, and should, converge in order to cover the weaknesses of each other.
Finally, vulnerability analysis can help navigate the risk of resilience thinking’s few practical examples of application. Vulnerability analysis has been successfully applied in the fields of ‘development, food security, and disaster risk communities…’ (Miller et al., 2010: np). It is in this area again that vulnerability analysis can ‘converge’ with resilience thinking in order to co-create better knowledge. However, Miller et al. (2010: np) are keen to point out that both fields must ‘better identify specific intervention points’ in order to be more impactful. Miller et al. (2010) imply that the converged fields must theorize policy measures to be of practical use – however it is important to note this exposes resilience and/ or vulnerability thinking to politicisation. By providing these ‘specific intervention points’ scholars may make vulnerability and resilience thinking a partisan exercise.
Reference List:
Adger, W. N.. 2006. Vulnerability. Global environmental change, 16(3), 268-281
Davoudi, S. 2012. Resilience: A Bridging Concept or a Dead End?. Planning Theory and Practice 13(2): 299-306 ONLY
Miller, F., et al. 2010. Resilience and vulnerability: complementary or conflicting concepts?. Ecology and Society 15(3): 11.
Callum McCadden