Community resilience: A meta-study of international development rhetoric in emerging economies

ABSTRACT

Understood generally, community resilience (CR) is the ability of communities to adapt, absorb, mitigate, and recover from shocks and stressors in such a way that facilitates positive future outcomes and reduces overall vulnerability to future shocks and stressors. The core of this definition relates to sustainability and the capability of socio-ecological systems and communities to adapt and transform to both day-to-day fluctuations and stressors as well as major disasters. This meta-study seeks to shed light on whether and how studies claiming to use a CR framework address and measure the four outcomes that result when a community is resilient. This analysis uses USAID’s resilience framework to assess whether the international development literature studies the outcomes of CR: touching upon nutrition, food security, economic security, and ecological sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Community capitals
• community resilience
• international development
• meta-study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.