How can resilient infrastructures contribute to social justice? Preface to the special issue of sustainable and resilient infrastructure on resilience infrastructures and social justice

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, the attention for resilience has increased dramatically and resilience has become the leading paradigm for considering risks and uncertainty in complex systems. Resilience is now commonly used within a broad range of fields. The concept has not only attracted the attention of academics; decision-makers across disciplines, sectors, and scales, also organize their risk strategies around the idea of resilience as resilience is often thought to lead to a better – that is, a safer and more just – society. However, the alleged link between resilience and justice is controversial. Some scholars argue that the resilience paradigm primarily benefits those people who are already reasonably well-off at the expense of disadvantaged groups. The focus in this special issue is on the relation between resilience, specifically ‘resilient infrastructures’, and social justice. While written from different disciplinary perspectives, all are centered around the question of how resilient infrastructures can contribute to social justice

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• vulnerability
• capability approach
• value-laden
• interdependency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO; grant number [016-144-071].

Notes on contributors

Neelke Doorn

Neelke Doorn is distinguished Antoni van Leeuwenhoek professor “Ethics of water engineering” at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her research interests centre around the ethical aspects of water engineering and climate change, with a special focus on distributive questions posed by a resilience approach to climate and water-related challenges. She is an internationally recognized expert in risk ethics and especially known for her pioneering work at the interface of water and safety engineering and philosophy. She is the co-editor-in-chief of the international journal Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology.