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Resilience, Hardship and Social Conditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

HULYA DAGDEVIREN ,
MATTHEW DONOGHUE  and
MARKUS PROMBERGER
HULYA DAGDEVIREN
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire, Business School, College Lane, Hatfield AL10 9AB email: [email protected]
MATTHEW DONOGHUE
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire, Business School, College Lane, Hatfield AL10 9AB email: [email protected]
MARKUS PROMBERGER
Affiliation:
Institute for Employment Research of the Federal Employment Agency, Regensburger Str. 104 D-90478 Nürnberg, Germany email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper provides a critical assessment of the term ‘resilience’ – and its highly agent-centric conceptualisation – when applied to how individuals and households respond to hardship. We provide an argument for social conditions to be embedded into the framework of resilience analysis. Drawing on two different perspectives in social theory, namely the structure-agent nexus and path dependency, we aim to demonstrate that the concept of resilience, if understood in isolation from the social conditions within which it may or may not arise, can result in a number of problems. This includes misidentification of resilience, ideological exploitation of the term and inability to explain intermittence in resilience.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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