Is resilience socially constructed? Empirical evidence from Fiji, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam
Global Environmental Change, Volume 38, May 2016, pp. 153-170, doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.03.005
The objective of this paper is to better understand the various individual and household factors that influence resilience, that is, people’s ability to respond adequately to shocks and stressors. It identifies the events affecting the lives and livelihoods of fishing communities such as delay in rainfall, death of the household head, consecutive harvest failures, or the devastating impact of seasonal tropical storms. It analyses the strategies adopted by these communities to respond to these events. It also explores the different factors that influence the choices of these strategies and looks at the influence of these factors on households resilience.
Key findings include:
- Data collected over two years in Fiji, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Vietnam confirms the importance of wealth in the recovery process of households affected by shocks and stressors. However the results challenge the idea that within communities, assets are a systematic differentiator in people’s response to adverse events.
- The findings regarding social capital are mixed and call for more research: social capital had a strong positive influence on resilience at the community level, yet this analysis failed to demonstrate any tangible positive correlation at the household level.
- The data confirm that, like vulnerability, resilience is at least in part socially constructed, endogenous to individual and groups, and hence contingent on knowledge, attitudes to risk, culture and subjectivity.
- Assets, social capitals and perceptions are central in people's resilience.