“Who knows what comes tomorrow?” A study of resilience discourse, practice, and politics in a post-disaster field

ABSTRACT

Using an empirical case study of resilience programs after a flooding disaster in Boulder County Colorado, I explore the factors that motivate individuals involved in disaster recovery and emergency management to engage in discourses and practices centered around institutionalizing resilience, withstanding shocks and stressors, and fostering connection as a way to deal with social inequality. This study contributes to a growing body of critical research that analyzes resilience’s multifarious institutional forms and divergent political consequences by unpacking how and why individuals reproduce ideological dimensions of resilience discourse and by examining the effects. I demonstrate how individuals faced structural constraints associated with the scalar dimensions of neoliberal restructuring that rendered resilience as practically appealing. Furthermore, I argue that existing institutional forces channelsensibilities in ways that actively depoliticize resilience. I conclude by discussing how this case underscores the importance of articulating the conditions under which resilience may be able to transcend the hyper-individualized model of the ‘resilient subject,’ and present a coherent challenge to neoliberal hegemony.

KEYWORDS:

• Disaster
• resilience
• discourse
• neoliberalism
• qualitative methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. CRRO https://sites.google.com/a/state.co.us/coloradounited/.

2. This research was approved by the University of Colorado Institutional Review Board (Protocol #16-0468).

3. Due to the small sample size and the need to maintain confidentiality of participant identities, I chose to use general descriptors of individual roles in the county, as well as use pseudonyms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simone J. Domingue

Simone J. Domingue is a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder and a graduate research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. Her research explores how social forces and power inequalities shape institutional responses to hazards and disasters.