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The Socio-Historical Constructiveness of Resilience

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Resilience in Social, Cultural and Political Spheres

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.

An earlier version of this paper was published open access in “Social Sciences” 2015, 4, 533-545 (Endress 2015a); https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4030533 (ISSN 2076-0760; www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See for further elaboration on these points and related questions: Endress 2008, 2016, 2019.

  2. 2.

    The classical sociological reference is here, obviously, Berger and Luckmann 1966. As for our current topic, see, for example, Bonss 1997 and Lau 1998.

  3. 3.

    The same argument appears in Oevermann’s (2003) systematic reflections on the methodological classification of a social constructionist perspective.

  4. 4.

    One of these interpretations then proceeds to identify a process of neoliberalization, see Joseph 2013.

  5. 5.

    See, for instance, Joseph, who points out “[t]he conservative ontology behind this” (2013, p. 43).

  6. 6.

    For a first attempt to discuss this issue in dialogue with classic sociological contributions, see Endress and Rampp 2014.

  7. 7.

    See especially Joseph 2013, 2016, 2018; Neocleous 2013; Chandler 2014a, b and Bröckling 2017.

  8. 8.

    In contrast to the contribution by Olsson et al. (2015).

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  1. Universität Trier, Trier, Germany

    Martin Endreß

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  1. Martin Endreß
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  1. Department IV – General Sociology, University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Benjamin Rampp

  2. Department IV – General Sociology, University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Martin Endreß

  3. Department IV – General Sociology, University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Marie Naumann

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Endreß, M. (2019). The Socio-Historical Constructiveness of Resilience. In: Rampp, B., Endreß, M., Naumann, M. (eds) Resilience in Social, Cultural and Political Spheres. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-15329-8_3

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